The Star-Filled Sky
by ofravenwings
Summary: Set six months after the events of "The Blood-Dimmed Tide". Darcy Lewis has been ordered by SHIELD to a remote cottage in the Scottish Highlands. It has been six months since she has seen Loki, six months since she has dreamed. Only the scars she still bears let her know that any of it happened at all...
1. Chapter 1

_The world is made from bone and blood and stars…_

These are the words that bring Darcy Lewis out of a dark and dreamless sleep. She's not certain if she has heard them whispered, or if they have risen out of the depths of her own soul. They circle around her, press sharp edges against her skin, slide like razors between her fingers. Her hands curl reflexively, as though she could physically catch the words, tease out their tangled meaning with nails and teeth and sheer will.

Darcy turns over in her narrow bed, lets her body relax, her eyes drift closed. Here, in the space between waking and sleeping, she can almost feel the weight of Loki beside her in the bed. She can almost pretend that everything is the way that she had hoped it would be.

The illusion lasts only until she opens her eyes. Her hands are half curled into fists, empty. Her left wrist still bears the thick scars from Hel's claws, and when she turns her hand the right way, she can see the faint white marks left behind by Hel's other marks, the black lace-like swirls that had climbed her arm, marking her as Hel's supplicant.

The words were part of a dream, she supposes, though she remembers none. For the last two months, there has been nothing but darkness every time she closes her eyes.

The small joints in her fingers pop and crack as she stretches her hands, then lifts her arms over her head. The knotted scar over her heart pulls against her skin, a numb mass that always feels wrong, as though someone has inserted something non-living beneath her skin.

The tiny bedroom has never grown familiar, for all of the mornings she has woken up here, and the narrow bed never feels like hers. Even the clothing in the crooked wardrobe feel like they are borrowed from a stranger when she pulls them on, no matter how many times she wears them.

The room is small, the walls roughly plastered and the single window only as wide as her shoulders. The heavy curtains are drawn aside, though Edith, the woman who comes from the closest village to service the house, warned Darcy to keep them closed against the cold. The first night, Darcy had taken Edith's advice, and all night she had felt overheated, the air in the room smothering. In the nights since, she has left the curtains open, and she has slept, albeit restlessly. Something about being able to see the sky when she wakes is soothing, even if most of the time all she can see is a thick layer of cloud.

Darcy swings her feet out of bed, pads to the window. Her bare feet make a hollow sound on the floorboards, reminding her of the vast basement that stretches beneath the house. She's dressed only in a loose t-shirt and underwear, both items thin enough to see through. In New York, she never would have stood at a window dressed like this. Here, she has no fear of anyone seeing her. The village is more than an hour away by car, and there are no other houses here in the valley. Edith has the knack for coming by the house only when Darcy is occupied or sleeping. Mostly, Darcy doesn't mind the loneliness. Mostly.

The window is patterned with a lacework of frost, the thin light dappling shadows over her arms. Darcy presses her fingertips against the glass, remembering a room filled with snow and ice, a maelstrom barely contained by concrete and magic. Her own magic stirs sluggishly within her in response to the memory. Since she stepped from the Bifrost, the magic has solidified within her, become a distant thing. She's never been certain if it gives her relief or worries her. She's not certain of much, out here.

She watches her skin grow blue, then white, as the cold creeps over her skin. Only when the chill reaches her scars does she let her hands fall from the window. The marks of Hel's claws look gnarled, but the skin there is thin, fragile enough that she's opened the scars more than once. Each time the scars had bled, she had held her breath until she had seen that the blood was red, not black.

If it wasn't for the scars on her wrist and chest, she would find it easy most days to believe that none of it had ever happened. That gods had never come to Earth. That New York hadn't almost been destroyed twice over. That she hadn't walked into a labyrinth, willingly sacrificed painful memories to summon Hel, the goddess of death.

That she hadn't fallen in love with Loki. Walked into Helheim itself to bring him back from the dead.

Two months since she and Loki had stepped from the Bifrost, two weeks since she stepped off the plane and onto Scottish soil.

Two months without Loki, and with every day that passes, everything feels less and less real.

Darcy twists the ring she still wears on her left hand. The broken threads of metal press into the skin of the neighbouring fingers; there are callouses there where she has pressed the strands into her skin over and over. At first, the skin had grown raw and bled, but over the last few months it had toughened, grown numb.

If she focuses hard, she can almost summon up the feeling of Loki's hand in hers as they had stepped into the Bifrost. In that moment, she had thought that everything was going to be okay. She loved Loki, and Loki loved her. Hel had been returned to Helheim, Loki had a seat waiting for him on the Asgardian Council, if he wished to take it. Thor had been certain that everything in Midgard was going to be okay, and Darcy had even entertained the idea of becoming an Avenger, or at least a SHIELD agent.

Then they had stepped out of the other side of the rainbow bridge.

Several dozen heavily armed SHIELD agents had been waiting, all of them clad in black Kevlar. For a heartbeat, Darcy had held hard to Loki, and then they had been drawn apart. He had no fought the agents, simply let them lead him away. At the last, before they ushered him into a black van, he had looked back at Darcy and smiled. Even then, she had thought that everything was going to be okay.

After that, a SHIELD facility, a series of rooms with no windows. Medical tests, psychological tests, tests she had no idea what their purpose were. The doctors had eyed her scars with interest and not a little revulsion, taken dozens of vials of blood. Darcy had submitted meekly, because _everything was going to be okay_.

Eventually, the doctors had declared that they had been unable to find anything physically wrong with her. The scars were just ordinary scars, her blood just ordinary blood. Psychologically, she was showing the effects of trauma, but was also demonstrating remarkable resilience. Darcy had smile, and told that they had just described most New Yorkers. The doctors had not smiled back.

Jane had visited once, after the medical tests had finished. She smiled too much, and she did not meet Darcy's eyes. Told her that all of this was necessary, that things would be okay.

A thread of fear had started to tighten in Darcy, then, but she had nodded and smiled, watched Jane walk out, heard the door lock behind her.

The night after Jane's visit, Darcy had gone to sleep, woken slumped beside Natasha Romanov in a car headed towards a small private plane. Her head had felt as though it was stuffed with cotton wool, her eyes not focusing when she tried to read the signs that told her what airport she was at. The plane had been empty apart from the two of them, the pilot silent as the plane took off.

An hour into the flight, Natasha had told Darcy that they were headed to Scotland. Darcy would be required to remain in a house owned by SHIELD in the Scottish Highlands, would be expected to comply with any further testing required of her.

"You raised a goddess," Natasha had said, her eyes on the back of the empty chair in front of her. She had taken a seat across the aisle from Darcy: close, but not too close. "Hel almost destroyed the world. You walked into the Underworld, and you rescued another god who almost destroyed the world. They don't trust you, and they don't understand you."

"But Asgard-"

"Has no say in any of this," Natasha had said flatly. "You're only getting this chance because Thor and Stark demanded it."

"Chance for what?" Darcy had asked.

Natasha had closed her eyes then, apparently asleep. Darcy had known that if she'd done anything that Natasha had deemed a threat, the Black Widow would be awake in a heartbeat.

None of it makes sense, even now. Had she been sent here to prove that she was no threat? Or was it simple exile? Was she supposed to be thankful that they hadn't just let Natasha put a bullet in her head?

And where was Loki? If they sent Darcy all the way to the other side of the world, what were they doing to him?

Pain stabs into Darcy's wrist. She's been rubbing at the scars hard enough to break the thin skin. Bright red droplets of blood well, slide along the traces of Hel's other curlicued marks.

Darcy blots the blood with the hem of her shirt. The scars bleed easily, but they heal quickly, too. Small mercies, and all of that.

#

The house itself is a small cottage tucked away in a shallow valley amidst rolling hills. Most of the surrounding land has been cleared, and shows signs of having been farmed at some earlier time, though the fields are home now only to weeds and scattered wildflowers. In the near distance, tucked into the fork between two valleys, a small stand of woodland, the trees ancient and gnarled.

When Natasha had led Darcy from the car to the house - no weapons visible, but she was the Black Widow, and Darcy had no doubt that she carried more than one hidden gun - Darcy had glimpsed only green and grey and shadow. Inside, Natasha had knelt and fastened a slim metal cuff around one of Darcy's ankles. There was no physical catch on the cuff, the black metal simply sealing to form a solid circle. Natasha had told her that the cuff would report Darcy's location to SHIELD at all times. She could consider herself free to walk the surrounding land, but any lengthy absences from the house would be treated as potentially suspicious. She was to go nowhere near the village.

The metal of the cuff cold against her skin, Darcy had thought of Loki and the Asgardian vault: _a relic locked away until you are in need of me._

She had asked Natasha about Loki's whereabouts, but Natasha had simply kept on talking as though Darcy had said nothing at all. Clothing had been supplied for her, along with a library of books and media. The house had no telephone or access to television channels, but there was a satellite internet connection. A woman, Edith, would come by from the village at regular intervals to supply Darcy with food, and she could request books and other sundry items from her.

Though Natasha had said nothing about surveillance, Darcy had taken it for granted that SHIELD had more means that just the cuff to keep track of her. She also knows that what she requests from Edith will all go through SHIELD, and they will only supply her with what they deem necessary. She can't see them supplying her with books such as _How to free your Asgardain god boyfriend from the clutches of SHIELD_.

She makes herself go through the routines of bathing, washing her hair, dressing. One of the shrinks who had visited her in the SHIELD facility - a blonde with a penchant for too bright pink lipstick - had been big on the importance of routine. _Remind yourself that life goes on_, the woman had said. _After the chaos of your recent life, it's important to remind yourself that you are alive, that your life is normal._

Darcy had wanted to argue with the woman, but she had seen how she had carefully placed herself close to the room's exit, how her gaze had skittered over Darcy's scars. Had seen the fear hiding beneath her poised facade.

The magic inside her moves, sluggish as a half-frozen ocean trying to move with the tides. Before all of this, the existence of that magic would have been a comfort, knowing that it originated from Loki. But Loki wasn't here. Might never be here. And the magic was utterly inaccessible to her, no matter what she tried. This might be the rest of her life, locked away like a stolen relic, walking circles around this house until she grows old and dies, her body become dust.

Even at that thought, she feels nothing. Just numbness sunk deep in her bones.

She feels like an echo of who she used to be, fading away into silence.

#

Darcy pulls a sweater over her head, shoves her feet into sturdy boots. She will grow too warm soon, and the sweater will be shucked, but for now, the thickness of the garment is comforting. She makes the bed, hopes that the next time Edith comes by, she'll be able to catch her, ask her how to turn down the heating in the house.

Edith has spoken to Darcy only once, on the first time she came by the house to fill the fridge and freezer. The room Darcy has chosen to sleep in, according to Edith, the servant's bedroom. It has its own bathroom, poky and dim. Down the hallway is what Edith had called the _master's_ suite, all dark wood and heavy furniture. The bed looked vaguely medieval, hung with acres of crimson velvet. Matching curtains swathed the room's windows. A door half hidden in one corner led to a dressing room and bathroom. Darcy had glimpsed the marble tub in the bathroom, then closed the door, looked away.

It has become a ritual of hers, circling the house and checking the rooms once she is awake and dressed. She opens the door to the master's suite, scans the room, moves through to the dressing room and bathroom. She has no idea what she's checking for, but she knows that she cannot settle to anything until she'd looked through the whole house. Back into the servant's room and bathroom, then across the hallway to the library.

Once, she would have taken joy in this room, the walls lined with bookshelves groaning beneath the weight of books. All fluff and brainless reading, the same she had been allowed in her imprisonment in Stark Tower. On a desk in the centre of the room is a battered laptop emblazoned with the Stark Industries logo. She opens it, waits to see if the internet will connect. The satellite connection has proven to be flaky, and some days she hasn't been able to connect to the internet at all. Today it connects; she leaves the laptop open, moves on.

The main living space has been created by knocking down several walls, rough places on the ceiling remaining to show where they had been. There's a television here, wiring hooking it to the device that holds the library of movies and television shows. The long couch is new, upholstered in black leather. It looks out of place here.

She catches sight of her reflection in the dead eye of the television screen. She looks like Darcy Lewis, even if she feels like nothing at all.

_I am nothing. I am no one._

She reaches behind her. In one of the first dreams she had shared with Loki, she had stood on the edge of the Stark Tower roof looking out over the ruins of New York. Loki had been there, supporting her before he even knew who she was.

Her hands close now only on air.

The first night here, she had gone to sleep early, hopeful that the shared dreams would begin now that she was out of the SHIELD impound. Out here, there were windows, there was sky, and it seemed that she should be able to dream again.

When she had closed her eyes, there had only been nothingness. Just empty black, from the time she went to sleep to the time she woke. And the same every night since.

Just emptiness, every night. As though Loki didn't exist, as though their connection had never existed.

Even when Loki had been dead, scattered over Helheim, Darcy hadn't felt this utter lack.

Darcy worries at the broken ring. Stark and Thor had asked for her to have this chance - whatever it was a chance for. Thor would find a way to tell her if anything happened to Loki. He would find a way.

A burning like acid behind her eyes, in her throat. She swallows hard, fearing that she's going to be ill. But all that rises in her throat is words: "The world is made of bone and blood and stars."

The cuff around her ankle grows cold. She moves into the kitchen, assuming that a breeze is making its way up through the floorboards from the basement. The basement is the one place she doesn't check each morning. Edith took her, the first visit, and showed her that there was nothing down there at all.

The words she spoke echo around her. She shudders, her insides twisting with revulsion. She has no idea if they mean anything, but they feel _wrong_. Like the fabric of the world being torn apart.

She takes a breath, counts slowly to ten. Another one of the shrink's tricks, but it helps. Her heart slows, and her stomach unknots.

"It's just being here on your own," she says, emulating the shrink's calm tones. She walks through into the kitchen, a small room that feels half tacked onto the cottage. "It's just the stress of everything that's happened. It's the stress of my recent life."

There's an automated percolator in the kitchen, the jug already filled with coffee. Back in New York, when everyone was starving, that jug of coffee was something she would have cut off her own arm for, on the worst days. Now it's just coffee, always there, and she pours a cup, drinks it down black and scalding. She pours a second mug and takes it out to the porch.

The world outside is green and grey. The stand of woodland on the other side of the fields is dark, the trees still. She doesn't look too closely at them. Doesn't want to know if any are ash or yew.

Soon after arriving, she had tried to search the internet for photographs of the branch of Yggdrasil and the memorial in Central Park. Beyond the stories that had been published soon after Hel vanished, there is nothing. It's just another thing that people walk past every and don't see, she supposes.

She curls up in the chair on the porch, sips her coffee. Her heart lurches as the caffeine bleeds into her system. She doesn't enjoy the feeling, but she keeps drinking, hopes that she will move past it to the happy buzz she used to get from coffee. It only gets worse, the acceleration of her heart feeling like time moving too fast, her life draining away, rushing away.

Darcy closes her eyes, presses her fingers hard against the sides of the mug. Small sparks of pain flare in her fingertips; in the darkness behind her eyes she can see them, small stars flaring and dying.

"Hello!"

Darcy's eyes fly open. There's a woman standing on the pathway leading up to the house, a stranger to Darcy. Her eyes are as bright as sapphires, her hair the pale cotton-spun colour that blonde fades to with age. Her features are webbed by wrinkles, the lines deeply carved into her skin. She wears a dress of bright blue, a white knitted shawl snugged around her shoulders. A worn, earth-coloured felt bag is looped over one shoulder. In the fields beyond her, Darcy can see two ravens digging at something in the earth.

The woman smiles as Darcy stares at her. Her front teeth have been cracked and repaired with gold. "Ah, lass, no need to be afraid of me."

Darcy sets her mug down, stands. "You startled me. I didn't think anyone lived out here."

"There are those of us, if you look." The woman moves to the edge of the porch, though she doesn't mount the steps. She holds out a calloused hand. "I'm your neighbour. Fionnula. It's a mouthful, I know."

"Fionnula." The woman's soft burred accent had transformed the name into something beautiful. In Darcy's mouth it is all awkward angles. "Darcy. Darcy Lewis." She takes Fionnula's hand. The woman's fingers are surprisingly warm.

"Oh, lass, you're as cold as ice!" Fionnula rubs Darcy's hands briskly between her hands. "You should dress more warmly. I hope whoever's left you here had given you some good thermals and woollens?"

Darcy looks down at her clothing. True, the sweater she chose was knitted loosely enough that she can feel the air moving through the weaving, but she already feels overheated. "I'm okay. There's lots of warm stuff."

"Good, good." Fionnula releases Darcy's hand, reaches into her bag. When she withdraws her hand, she holds a small brass key. "I came by to give you this. It was given into my keeping some years ago, and when I saw that Blackwood House was occupied, I thought I had best pass it on."

Darcy's heart skips. "_Blackwood_ Cottage?"

Behind Fionnula, the ravens take to the sky, cawing loudly as they fight over whatever they found hidden beneath the ground. "Named for the woods that remain down the valley." She presses the key into Darcy's palm. The metal is hot as fresh blood. "There's a hidden panel in the master's bedroom, leads to the corridors behind the walls."

"Behind the walls?" Darcy wants to hand the key back. It is too heavy in her hand. "They renovated, tore down walls. I think they would have found anything hidden."

"They won't have found any of this," Fionnula says. "You might want to go for a ramble through the Blackwood. Caledonian forest, that is, part of the original forests that covered this land entire. If you follow the path through the valley itself, you'll come to the loch. They say the _Each Uisge_ himself lives in those waters, so I wouldn't walk too close to the edge. Though creatures like that, they tend to leave witches alone."

"Witches? I'm not-"

Fionnula is already moving back down the path, her pace remarkably spry for someone her age. Darcy wants to follow her, to ask her more about this place, but she finds herself unable to move. She watches until the woman is out of sight.

Blackwood Cottage. Why did they bring her to a place called Blackwood Cottage?

She shudders, thinking of Daniel Blackwood. He was the one who manipulated her into guarding Loki in his cell, and he was the one who knew to use heat to torture a frost giant. Daniel Blackwood is vanished, his whereabouts unknown.

"Maybe it's just a coincidence," Darcy says. "That's all."

Her mother's voice whispers in her mind: _There is no such thing as coincidence, daughter. Everything is part of a plan_.

"And was part of the plan murdering your own children?" Darcy asks. Thinking that the arrival of the Asgardians signalled the beginning of the end times, Darcy's mother had held a shotgun to both of her son's heads, then turned it upon herself. "Some plan."

She laughs, but the sound is hollow in her ears.


	2. Chapter 2

Back inside, Darcy strips off her sweater, tosses it over the back of the couch. She can smell the metal of the key, sharp and bright and cold.

A false panel in the master's bedroom, Fionnula had said. Darcy makes her way through the house, pauses outside the bedroom door. A sharp pain spikes through her palm. She uncurls her fingers, sees that she's been clutching the key so hard that a sharp edge has sliced into her skin. The scent of metal grows thicker.

The key is oddly shaped. The shaft forms a loose spiral, and the head is composed of ornate twists and curls. Her blood had flowed into the spaces between the twists; in this light, it looks black. She rubs the key against her shirt, but the blackness remains. The scar on her wrist itches, and she swallows hard.

"My scars are just scars," she says. "My blood is just blood. The doctors all said."

She pushes the door open.

The curtains are open, a light breeze tugging at the fabric, then billowing the curtains out again. It looks as though the house itself is breathing.

Darcy pushes that image away as soon as it forms, strides into the room. Edith must have opened the window, that was all. Darcy closes the window, pulls the curtains closed so hard she hears stitches rip.

She switches on the lights in the room. The globes burn in ornate brass sconces on the walls, a flickering light not unlike candlelight. The pattern of metal on the sconces reminds me of the twisted metal of the key head.

She finds the hidden panel straightaway, though the keyhole is hidden amidst the moulding. Her scars tingle as she slides the key into the lock; it turns as easily as though it has been oiled only hours before.

Darcy glances around the room. Suddenly she can't remember if it is morning or afternoon. Here, with the curtains closed and the electric lights burning, it could be any time, any place. It could be no time, no place.

"God, Darce, stop it already," she says, deliberately pitching her voice loudly. "You're not some damn romance novel heroine. You're Darcy Lewis, assistant extraordinaire. Hell, you faced down…well, Hel. You don't get to be scared of a house."

A gust of wind shakes the house, and the walls shudder and groan. The panel swings inwards, revealing a small landing beyond. Someone has even wallpapered the opposite wall: the paper holds a faded pattern of white roses, their thorns sharp and bright. The space leading into the wall is small enough that anyone taller than Darcy would have a hard time fitting themselves through. Darcy immediately imagines Loki trying to fold himself into it. He'd be grinning like a child at a mystery like this, she knows. She smiles despite her earlier fear, hooks her hands onto the sides of the opening and leans into the hollow in the wall.

The wallpaper is only a single panel of paper. Beyond that, she sees the inner side of the outer stone wall. Someone has actually carved the stone with an odd swirling pattern, broken up here and there by something that looks almost like words, though in no language she can recognise. To her right, another wall, this one uncarved. To her left, a flight of stairs. The light from the room leaks through just enough for her to see that the stairs go down three steps, and then end in another stone wall.

Darcy pulls herself back into the room, feeling oddly disappointed. She had been right, after all. When they had renovated, they must have found the hidden passage, blocked it up, probably to stop drafts.

The wind rattles the house again, and a thin whistling rises, the air moving through cracks and crannies too small to see. They didn't exactly do a great job of their work, Darcy thinks as she closes the panel and locks it again.

In a fit of spite, she throws the key up on top of the bed's canopy. She doesn't see where it lands. Let it stay there gathering dust forever.

She closes the door to the bedroom, goes back into the kitchen. There's porridge doled out into individual servings in the fridge, supplied pre-cooked by Edith, and she heats up one of the containers, eats it without tasting a bite. Edith has also brought fresh fruit - apples and oranges - and Darcy peels an orange, eats it segment by segment. She remembers Beth with the orange Darcy had brought her, the way she'd fed her son, Ravi, some of the juice when they were both starving. She wonders how Beth is, hopes that she's okay.

Darcy tried, the first day, to hunt down information on the internet about Beth and Ravi, all of Ozymandias' cult. There was nothing, as though the whole thing had been scrubbed from history. Or more, likely, she realises now as she clears away the remains of her breakfast, SHIELD was simply selecting what information they were allowing Darcy to see.

Still, it hasn't stopped her trying to find her way around the filters that SHIELD has in place. Once or twice, she thinks that she's gotten close, but not close enough.

She goes back to the laptop now, her fingers moving over the keyboard. It feels like a dance she used to perform in another life, her bones and muscles performing the choreography through muscle memory alone.

Something clenches in her at the thought of dancing. She danced with Loki once.

"I'll dance with him again," she tells the laptop. It beeps at her as she encounters yet another roadblock in her searching. At least she manages to glean some news today. Stark is building a new medical research division. New York has reported its lowest crime rate ever. There is nothing of any of the other Avengers.

Nothing of Loki.

Darcy rubs at the scars on her wrist until small beads of blood well. Those are real at least. Hel was real, walking into Helheim was real.

She opens her email. Her inbox is empty, not even a single piece of spam. She hesitates, then opens a blank email, addresses it to Jane. She deletes the half dozen lines several times before she's happy with what she's written. Careful words asking little, but asking everything.

She sends the email, and it immediately bounces back. Addressee unknown.

Darcy swears. She's checking that she typed Jane's email address correctly when the connection dies.

The wind screeches outside, and the house shudders. The lights dim once, twice, and then go dark.

Darcy glares into the darkness. Blinks. A moment ago it was morning, wasn't it? Now it is full dark.

She kicks the table leg. Nothing happens, not even a stubbed toe. She sighs, pushes her hair back from her face. Edith had told her that they were heading into winter, that the weather would likely be knocking out power frequently over the coming months. There was a generator in a shed behind the house, along with enough fuel to last the winter twice over.

All Darcy has to do is get up, find her way through the house, crank up the generator.

She half stands, then her heart pounds hard. The last time she had been in a place this completely dark…

She makes herself stand up, curls her fingers hard into her palms. "You're not some stupid heroine in a gothic novel, and you're not going to go to pieces every damn time night comes," she tells herself. "No one's going to come and save you. Just get off your ass and get the generator going already."

She focuses on the routine that Edith had talked her through, and that helps push away the worst of the panic. A box of candles and matches in the kitchen, an oil lamp on the window sill. She lights a candle, only breaking three matches in trying to strike them, then lights the oil lamp. The wick catches slowly, a thin greasy thread of smoke rising. She's smiling triumphantly when she accidentally inhales the smoke, coughs, and extinguishes both candle and lamp.

"Could do with your magic right about now, Loki," she says. "Poof up some witchlight or something. Make a nice fire of the kitchen table."

She starts the process again, half expecting to turn and see him lounging against the bench, laughing as he watches her fumble in the dark. How could he allow anyone to confine him, after everything that happened? He should be here.

A smaller voice in her mind suggests that maybe she imagined it all. Maybe she meant nothing to him after all. Maybe as soon as he had a measure of freedom, he took it, returned to the life he always had. Maybe even now he was sitting on the Asgardian Council, laughing about stupid Midgardian girls.

Darcy focuses on the flame flickering in the oil lamp. Makes herself remember Yrsa, Bera, Frigga's rings and conjured rooms. Makes herself remember Loki sacrificing himself so that she, Darcy, could survive.

"It meant something." She shutters the lamp. "It meant everything."

For all of the trouble that she had with the matches, candle and lamp, the generator rumbles smoothly into life at the single press of a button. Big and red and idiot proof, Edith had called it.

The house is a beacon in the night, though she has no memory of turning on the lights in every room. A light rain is falling, the droplets little more than mist in the warm air. When she looks up at the sky, she sees that the clouds are heavy and low. Lightning flashes in her peripheral vision, followed almost immediately by thunder, oddly muted.

She might not be a real scientist, but she knows that thunder that close after lightning means that a storm is overhead, or close to. That should have meant heavy rain, lashing wind. The ground should be shuddering from the force of it.

She can feel nothing at all.

She goes back inside, slides the bolts home. She can hear the wind whistling through the cracks of the house, for all that it had barely felt like a gentle breeze outside.

Gathering the lamp and spare candles and matches, she goes into the servant's bedroom. The blankets and sheets are still tangled from the previous night, and she she needs to do is kick off her boots and snuggle down into the nest they form. Almost immediately she's overheated, but she just burrows down deeper, pulls the blankets over her head. Drifts off to sleep.

#

Darcy is dreaming.

She knows this immediately, for all that she and the city surrounding her feel solid and real. She is standing on the edge of Central Park, the place where she had entered the labyrinth and aided in the raising of Hel. It feels like a lifetime ago. It feels like a breath ago.

She is standing facing the city, her back to the park, but she can feel the remains of the branch of Yggdrasil that had grown there. Alive and dead, alive and dead, there and not there.

She wonders if her own name remains carved into the memorial there.

It's the first time, waking or dreaming, that she's even thought of the legalities of everything that had happened. She had been declared dead, and she has no idea if anyone actually undid that declaration. Is she still dead? She supposes that someone took care of it - Stark or SHIELD or whoever - but it's disconcerting, not knowing. She can't even remember if she flew out of the country using a passport. Her old passport was gone, certainly, along with everything from her old life, thanks to Ozymandias and his people.

She shakes her head, wishing she could clear out the fog that fills her mind. That has filled her mind since the moment she and Loki stepped into the Bifrost. There was a moment of absolute clarity there, of believing that everything would be okay. And then, after the rainbow bridge, there was only the fog.

She closes her eyes for a moment, opens them again. The sky is clear blue, the air warm and tinged with a hint of spring. She's sweating, and when she looks down she sees that she's wearing the woollens she wore to bed in Scotland. In the dreams - if they were even dreams - that she shared with Loki, she was able sometimes to change her clothing with a thought.

She thinks, visualising something lighter, and her clothing shifts, becomes the emerald gown she wore in the Labyrinth dream. _Not_ what she had been focusing on. She rolls her eyes at her subconscious, focuses again. Her clothing does not shift.

"Nice job, Darce, just wander around in an evening gown. No one's going to notice you. Though, this _is_ New York." She looks up and down the street, another realisation hitting here. "Not that there's anyone here to see you anyway."

She pushes her hair back from her face, wishing that she had thought to visualise a hair elastic as well. It's only when she lowers her hands that it hits her that she's not wearing her glasses, and yet she can see perfectly.

Another disconcerting thought sidles in: has she been wearing her glasses at all since she came back from Helheim? She cannot remember, and it bothers her. She's worn glasses since she was six, and though she can see well enough to move around without them, she still needs them.

The light shifts, as though someone has moved briefly to stand between her and the sun, and then she is standing in front of Stark Tower. It is as abandoned as the street she was on, everything perfectly clean, as though it has never been touched. The doors stand wide open, no security to be seen.

That shift of light again, and she is inside. In the basement, standing in front of what had been the entrance to the guard room leading to Loki's cell. There's only a solid slab of concrete there now. She lays a hand against it, and it feels warm, as though a heart beats against her palm.

She tries to visualise what lies beyond. The guard room, the cell. The last time she had seen Daniel Blackwood had been outside that cell. The last time she had heard his name had been in this building.

Until Blackwood House.

_Why_ would they send her to Blackwood House? Was it just a co-incidence?

Darcy's head hurts, for all that she tells her body that it's dream. It doesn't feel like a dream now. When she scrapes her fingers down the rough edge of the concrete, she grazes her skin. Tiny beads of blood well, then the prickling pain.

_Was_ this a dream?

That shift again, and this time she is back in Central Park. In the distance, the branch of Yggdrasil thrusts up against an overcast sky, as black and lightless as though it is a jagged tear in space itself.

There are people gathered in a group before her, all of them dressed in solid black. They have their faces turned away, all of them focused on a woman standing on a platform, also draped in black, her face hidden by shadow.

A woman in the back of the group turns, and Darcy sees her profile. Darcy's heart skips, because the woman has used black marker to trace curlicues down the side of her face. The woman turns more, and her eyes fall on Darcy. And Darcy's heart lurches painfully, because the woman's eyes are solid black, as black as the branch of Yggdrasil and as great a weight in the world.

The woman's lips curl back from her teeth, and Darcy feels her scars grow cold as ice.

Darcy closes her eyes, _wills_ the woman away, wills the dream away with every fibre of her being.

When she opens her eyes again, she is in the Caledonian forest. The sky above is grey, the air damp, but it is not raining. Darcy drags in a breath, releases it slowly. Glad to smell nothing but loam, nothing but the earth.

A soft sound tickles at the edge of her consciousness. It takes her a moment to place it, to follow an almost imperceptible path through the trees to a clearing.

The clearing is not large, but neither is it small. It holds nothing but a tree, its pale branches bare. Instead of leaves, it has been hung with glass and crystals. The lower limbs hold fat blue bottles, several holding what looks like scrolls of parchment, their mouths clotted closed with wax.

A soft breeze winds across the clearing, and the bottles and crystals chime together softly, creating an assonant music that sounds to Darcy as though it belongs to another world.

The music washes away everything: the worries about her death or lack of it, the woman's black eyes. Darcy feels as though a warm breeze is flowing over her, though the air has grown still, washing everything away, making her anew.

She walks across to the tree, aware peripherally that as she approaches, her gown changes, becomes something made of simple pale linen, her hair loose down her back.

She can't help it. She wants to hear that music again. She reaches up and touches one of the lowest branches, and she feels the magic within her uncurl, growing and _becoming_. She can almost see it, a seed germinating, reaching for the light. And it's been dark for so long, and she just wants to _feel_ again.

A sharp pain in her wrist, and she pulls her hand away as if she has been burned.

Where she has touched the branch, a black lacework remains, as though seared into the tree's bark.

#

Darcy wakes to the thin light of morning.

The storm has blown itself out, and when she peers out of the cracked curtains, she sees that the sky holds only high, thin clouds.

She doesn't bother changing out of her sweat-damp clothes, just pushes her feet into her boots, grabs a jacket and heads out of the house.

It's only when she reaches the edge of the woodland that she remembers the tracker Natasha put on her, wonders what the real range she has before it sends an alarm to someone.

And who does it send that alarm to, anyway?

She tilts her head back, opens her eyes wide and stares into the clouds until her eyes begin to water. It hurts, but pain means that she's awake. And she feels like she's been sleeping for so long.

She finds the tree as easily as though it were calling her, though there are few tracks through the woods. Here and there she hears a rustle of movement, and knows that she's being watched by the animals which live there. None of them come close enough for her to identify them.

The tree is the same as it was in her dream. Everything is still, but for the highest branches, which sway gently in a breeze that Darcy cannot feel. The crystals fastened there look to have been reclaimed from an old chandelier, and they are weathered and chipped, but they make soft music all the same when they chime together.

Darcy walks a slow circle around the tree. The cobalt bottles are there, each with their scroll tucked inside, the mouth of the bottle plugged by wax. She looks closer at one, and can discern a fingerprint pressed into the wax, the whorls and ridges darkened with a fine layer of dust.

She walks until she finds the place she stood in the dream, reaches up a hand, but does not touch the branch. _Cannot_ touch it, her entire body frozen, her skin slicked with ice.

As in the dream, the pale bark of the tree is marked with black curlicues, fine and as dark as though they had been burned into the living flesh of the tree. They climb like ivy, extending towards the tree's trunk.

"It was a dream," Darcy says. She shakes her head; she feels as though that fog is descending again, growing thicker, pressing against the bones of her skull. "It was just a dream. Wasn't it?"


	3. Chapter 3

Darcy runs back to the house. The ground beneath her boots is slippery, and her boots slide several times, the longest slide sending her to her knees. Wetness soaks into the hem of her nightgown, the cotton flaps heavy against her legs.

By the time she's inside, she's overheated, sweating hard despite the fact that frost still clings to the windows beside her. She strips off the cardigan that she cannot remember pulling on, tosses it to the ground.

All she can see are those black marks twisting around the branches of the tree. They feel _wrong_. Like disease, like rot, but deeper, somehow, as though the black was simply the surface of something that went down and down, twisting into the very roots of the world.

When she holds her wrist up to the light, she sees that the scars almost look darker: light grey instead of white. The slaty colour of an overcast sky when individual clouds have merged together. For a moment, she can almost feel the close humidity of the air before a good storm, can smell ozone. The scent changes, becomes burning wood, burning flesh.

Her stomach twists, and she runs for the bathroom. Her stomach is empty, and she brings up only thin bile. Her stomach burns as though she has brought up pure acid.

Suddenly all she can smell is the mud clotting her nightgown: it smells like rot, like death.

She turns on the shower, steps beneath the hot water fully clothed. The water is almost hot enough to scald, but she stands beneath it until all of the mud had been washed away, dark swirls spiralling down the drain. Her vision is greying at the edges when she turns off the water, strips off the sodden clothes and steps out to dry herself. Her legs fold beneath her, and she collapses to the ground, curled up tight beneath the thick towel.

She wishes that Loki was here. She wishes that Jane was. Hell, she wishes that _Natasha_ was, for all that the woman seems to hate Darcy. She just wants very much not to be alone.

Slowly, the dizziness passes. Darcy dries herself, fetches clean clothes. Woollen leggings, layers of loose shirts, a thick cardigan. She ties her hair back, puts her glasses on.

Only then does she lift her wrist, examine the scars again. They are white, the same as they had been since she returned to Earth.

The memory rises, of standing hand-in-hand with Loki before the Bifrost, ready to step into the rainbow bridge with him. She'd saved him, brought him back from _Hel_. They could deal with anything. Only if they were together.

She remembers Loki's face as the SHIELD agents took him away. He hadn't fought, had gone along willingly, but his expression when he'd looked back at her had been odd. There had been something of apology, something of worry. But there had also been something that looked very much like relief.

Maybe he hadn't wanted to come here with her. Maybe he'd wanted to _use_ her to come to Midgard.

Darcy shakes her head, as though the thought is a physical thing she could dislodge. She forced herself to remember the time spent in the hidden rooms Frigga conjured. Loki's hands on her, Loki's kiss. Loki saving her life, sacrificing himself so that she could live.

"Is that what you want?" she asks the empty room. In the apartment, there had always been cameras watching her. Here, she could see no surveillance but for the tracker around her ankle, but she had no doubt that they had some way of watching her. Natasha had said that SHIELD didn't trust her, after all. "Do you just want me to go nuts out here on my own?"

The room doesn't answer. She's thankful for that, at least.

She goes into the kitchen, where glorious coffee is waiting for her. She adds spoon after spoon of sugar, the surface of the dark liquid rippling with a rainbowed sheen. A skim of oil from the coffee beans, she thinks. She takes a large gulp, and the caffeine hits almost immediately, jolting her heart like electricity. It lurches within her almost painfully, hammering against her ribs. She sets the mug down, glares at its contents.

"Darcy Lewis unable to finish a cup of coffee." She takes the cup to the sink, pours it out. "The world must really be ending."

There's a box of tea bags in the cupboard, which she regards for a moment before closing the door. The coffee is almost uncomfortably hot in her belly, bringing sweat beading on her forehead. She peels off layers of clothing, turns to the fridge. A glass bottle of apple juice on the top shelf. She takes it out, pours a glass.

One sip, and she's back in a memory. She was perhaps four years old, sick with a stomach flu. Her mother had brought her a glass of apple juice - the watered down concentrate that, at other times, Darcy had hated - but that day the juice had been so cold that condensation had been forming on the outside of the glass, and the sunlight had caught in the glass, turning the juice to liquid gold. Darcy had been unable to keep food down for over two days, and the first sip of that cheap juice had been utter heaven. There had been a moment, her mother standing over her, that Darcy had allowed herself to sink into the fantasy that she had the family she dreamed about. That her mother loved her, that the frown drawing her brows together was one of concern, and not annoyance at her life being disturbed by a sick child.

Four years old, and Darcy had already known that she was unwanted, unloved.

Darcy tips the apple juice down the drain. Opens the bottle and lets that drain away as well. She manages to stop herself a heartbeat away from smashing the bottle on the kitchen floor.

There are no fantasies, just the reality of what her life had been. What her life is. There's no use pretending any different.

Outside, in the woods, an animal calls. She's not sure what, has no idea what animals even live out here. Wolves? Foxes? The howling cry comes again, and this time it sounds almost human. Like a human in pain, lost and afraid.

It registers that the power is back on, and she goes to the computer. The machine grumbles, but it boots up, cycling through the usual series of startup screens. When she opens her email, she finds a message from Jane. It's a single line only, no salutation or sign-off. All it says is that everything is fine.

Which means, most likely, that nothing is fine and everything is going to hell.

Darcy stands, goes to the window. Outside, everything is green and grey. It's peaceful, even the crying animal gone to silence now. If all she knew about the world was what she could see right now, she would find it hard to believe that there was anything wrong in the world at all. That anything had ever been wrong.

She rubs the scar on her wrist. That, and the frozen magic within her, remind her constantly that things had been about as bad as they could possibly be. That maybe they were worse now.

Her fingers go to the ring on her finger, and she rubs the pad of her thumb across the broken strands. She wonders if Loki still wears his ring. Maybe SHIELD had him locked in another prison, another dungeon. Maybe worse.

Darcy wraps her arms around herself. She becomes aware that she's shivering lightly, though she doesn't feel cold. The shivering deepens, becomes a kind of electricity, an energy surging beneath her skin. She wants to be _moving_, doing something - doing anything but standing here staring out through glass.

She changes into sturdy jeans, finds a pair of hiking boots and a hooded waterproof jacket. When she leaves the house, she does not lock the door. She doesn't intend to go far, and there's no one here to break in, besides.

She begins walking circles around the house, keeping close to the outer wall at first, then slowly moving outwards. It feels strange to be walking without her iPod jammed into her ears, to be walking without needing to get somewhere. Back before everything, she'd always mocked the people who went jogging - running in loops or circles, never going anywhere but the place where you'd started. It had always seemed so pointless.

Her body warms quickly, and she soon shucks off the jacket, tosses it towards the front door of the house as she passes it. Blackwood House, from the outside, is as grey as the sky, the windows and doors hooded with moulded iron. It gave the windows the odd effect of appearing too much like eyes, if you glances at them sideways while passing. As though the house was watching her.

Mud clings to her boots, and she slides more than once when she steps on a particularly deep patch. Even the air seems sodden, and her clothing grows damp against her skin. She wonders if anything ever really gets dry here. The moss creeping between the bricks of the house seems to say no.

It feels good to be moving, even as her breath comes harder, rasping in her lungs, and her muscles begin to burn. She walks faster, and then she is jogging. Running feels easier than walking, somehow, the movement of her muscles smoothing, growing more liquid. Some distant part of her mind marvels at this: Darcy Lewis, running. Back in school, when they had been made to run track, she had always been lucky to make it half way round before she collapsed, wheezing for breath. Now, it felt as though running was what her body had been designed for.

She stops abruptly when she realises that she's looped out from the house so far that she stands before the thicket of woods. The metal of the ankle cuff is cold against her heated skin, and she wonders how far she's actually allowed from the house before it sounds an alarm.

"Maybe it's not connected to anything, eh?"

Darcy starts. Fionnula stands behind her, Blackwood House over her shoulder. She carries a basket looped over her wrist, and her hair has been tucked away beneath a scarf as bright blue as the dress she had been wearing the first time Darcy saw her. The hem of her dress is just high enough to reveal that she's wearing heavy boots almost identical to Darcy's, though no mud clings to them.

Darcy glances at the house, suddenly uncomfortable with the fact that Fionnula is between her and safety.

Fionnula smiles thinly, the blue of her eyes cooling slightly. "I've brought you some things." She holds out the basket.

Darcy looks into the basket, though she makes no move to take it. There's a loaf of bread wrapped in muslin, several small tins and a pot of dark honey.

"Edith won't think of things like this," Fionnula said. "She's good at what she does, but the little things, they escape her."

A cool breeze winds out from the woods behind Darcy, chilling the sweat on her skin. There's a dark scent on that breeze, something organic rotting. "I should get back inside."

"I'll carry these in for you."

Fionnula follows two steps behind Darcy as she walks back to the house. Darcy can't be sure, but she has the feeling that Fionnula is walking carefully, stepping in Darcy's own footprints as they walk across the muddy field.

When Darcy reaches the stoop, Fionnula is there beside her. There's relief when Fionnula sets the basket down on the step, moves back.

"It's tea," Fionnula says. "I grow the herbs, dry them myself. The peppermint is good for an upset stomach, especially. There's a blend to help you sleep too: valerian, lavender, some other bits. There's some ginger, too, mixed with lemon. It hasn't been easy to get hold of lemons these last few months, but I had some dried and put aside." She touches the side of the basket with one foot. "The bread I baked in the oven my husband built for me. He passed some years back."

At the mention of the world husband, Fionnula suddenly seems nothing more than an elderly woman, lonely and alone. Darcy reminds herself that that's all Fionnula is. Just a woman who lives out here alone. Not everything was a threat.

"Thank you," Darcy says. "Really."

Fionnula smiles, revealing her gold teeth. "Oh, it's nothing, lass. It's good to see someone living here again, tell the truth. Blackwood's been a lonely house too long."

"Where do you live?"

Fionnula waved a hand in the vague direction between two patches of woodland. "I like to ramble. Even in the weather, you can't keep me in. My husband was always on at me about it, but look who's alive now?"

Darcy looks away. The metal of the cuff is wedged into the top of one of her boots, the kind of cold that feels like wetness against her skin. "Do you really think they wouldn't have this connected to anything?"

"Doesn't seem much use to have someone under house arrest out here, is all. 'Tis a long walk to much of anywhere. Or much of nowhere." She laughs, then, a bright sound in the still air. "I should be getting back. I'll bring you more, if you like that. Just let me know."

Darcy watches Fionnula move back towards the woods, a small bright figure in the green and grey. Fionnula walks to the edges of the trees, pauses there a long moment, then turns and circles around instead.

The basket than heavier than it appears, and by the time Darcy brings it into the kitchen, her arm is aching. She unpacks it, and finds a clutch of small jars beneath the bread, all wrapped up in a knitted shawl like eggs in a nest. There's butter there, and jams bright as jewels. Suddenly she's ravenous, and she carves off hunks of the bread, spreads them with the butter and jam. Only once she's finished three slices does she think to shake out the shawl. The wool has been dyed emerald green, black crystals scattered around the hems. The crystals capture the thin grey light, spin it to rainbows. Darcy's hands shake as she folds the shawl into a small square, sets it back into the basket.

She's halfway through the house before she turns back, takes the shawl out of the basket and wraps it around her shoulders. It smells like spices: cinnamon and cloves, with a darker undernote almost like leather.

Something screws up tight within her, and she presses her thumb against the broken ring on her finger, presses hard enough to draw blood. The shawl brushes against the injury as she lowers her hand, and the blood soaks into the wool. When she touches the place where the blood soaked in, it's dry, not even a stain there.

She opens the email from Jane. Stares at the empty page for a long time, pulling the wool tight around her shoulders. Finally, she makes herself type. She asks about Jane, she asks about New York, she asks about the Avengers.

She cannot bring herself to ask about Loki. She's scared of what Jane will say in reply.

She sends the email before she can think about it again, opens her web browser. When she tries to navigate to a news site, the browser goes blank, then brings up an error. Darcy frowns, tries another site. The same thing happens, again and again, no matter what site she tries to connect to.

Her email program pings, and she opens it, hoping for an answer from Jane. The message is automated; SHIELD security telling her that her external internet connection has been revoked. She will be allowed email within SHIELD, and nothing else.

Darcy stares at the computer. Writes another email to Jane, asking why her access was revoked.

Outside, wind is buffeting the house again, hard enough that the windows rattle. Another storm, Darcy supposes. She wonders if the power will go out again. She wonders if she'll care if it does.

#

Days pass. There is no reply from Jane.

Darcy does not sleep, just lies in bed and stares at the ceiling, waiting for it to be light enough for her to get up and dress.

After a week, the weather growing steadily more chill, Edith comes by laden with supplies. She fills the kitchen cupboards, the freezer, even stacks boxes of canned goods in the basement. She warns Darcy that the snow will begin soon, and she will not be able to come by once winter starts in earnest.

After she leaves, Darcy walks around the house. There are boxes of new books and movies, though Darcy hadn't requested any. In the kitchen are stacked boxes of craft supplies. The scissors taped to the side of one of the boxes are blunt, the kind you give to toddlers who are more likely to cut their own fingers than they are to cut paper.

It's the kind of thing you give to someone in prison, someone in rehab. Someone you think is dangerous.

Darcy hauls those boxes down to the basement, hides them behind the boxes of soup and tinned fruit.

That night, she brews a pot of the valerian tea Fionnula brought her. It's bitter, even with honey added, but she drinks it down. It works well enough, sinking her into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Soon enough she brews the tea in large jugs, doesn't bother to add honey. Sleep is preferable to anything that can happen here while she's aware. She lies in bed, and when she wakes she drinks from the jug, not caring if the tea has grown even more bitter when it cooled. It gets her back in the darkness where she doesn't have to feel anything, and that's all that matters.

She gets up only to use the bathroom and to brew more tea.

The internet connection is out more than it works, and on the times that she manages to connects, there's never a message from Jane. No contact from anyone. She might as well not exist. She might as well sleep forever.

#

Darcy doesn't know how much time has passed when she wakes and finds the jug by her bed empty.

She frowns at it, because she's always been so careful to keep the tea always brewed, the jug always holding at least enough to sink her down into the black for another night. But now it's empty.

She picks up the empty jug, staggers into the kitchen, leaning heavily on the walls as she goes. She feels drunk, her bones aching and her head pounding. It's only when she sees the empty tin on the kitchen counter than she remembers the last time she woke. There hadn't been enough of the herbs to brew any tea, and she had actually resorted to chewing a mouthful of them, gagging as she tried to swallow.

It's snowing outside, a good inch of white already gathered on the windowsill. Frost swirls across the glass, and when she exhales, her breath is white. She feels the magic within her grow even colder, a vast lake of ice that stretches on and on forever.

Even though she has known it since Natasha drove away and left her here, for the first time she feels truly alone, truly abandoned.

There's a voice, deep within her, deeper than the frozen magic. Telling her that Loki is a _god_, and it he wanted to be here, _truly_ wanted to be with her, he would be. Nothing SHIELD or anyone could do would stop him, if he truly wanted. If he truly loved her.

The glass jug is a heavy weight in her hand. She lifts it, turning it to see the way the light moves through the glass. The inside is stained greenish black from the tea she's been brewing, and the scent that rises from within borders on the edge between bitterness and rot.

When she turns the jug again, the light refracts through it, spilling onto her scarred wrist. The scars darken, as though they cannot be touched by the light.

It doesn't feel like it's Darcy's hand at all as she watches it lift the jug high, throw it down against the tiled floor. For a moment, the glass holds together, shivering, and then it explodes into a thousand shards. They spin away across the tiles, erupt into the air. One rises high enough to scrape a sharp, stinging line across her cheek.

Darcy raises her hand to the cut, and her finger comes away daubed with black blood.

_He doesn't love you,_ that voice says, a sibilant whisper so loud in her skull that she can feel her bones vibrate. _He never did. He used you, just as everyone has always used you. They've all forgotten about you. Right now, they're laughing, all of them together. Thor and Jane, The Black Widow and Hawkeye. Even Loki. He and his brother are laughing together, and none of them are even thinking about you._

Darcy presses her hands to her temples, presses hard enough that she can hear the bones creak. "No. They wouldn't forget about me. Jane emailed me. They have surveillance on me."

_Take off the tracking cuff, then. Make them come._

Darcy looks down at the cuff. She can just see the edge of it where it's worked its way out between her thick socks and her leggings. She notices, too, that she's wearing the shawl Fionnula gave her, the wool matted and dull. She pulls the shawl off, tosses it onto the pile of broken glass. Her breath plumes white still, but she doesn't feel cold at all. She feels as though she's running with fever, so hot that the edges of the magic inside of her start to melt, just a little.

And it feels like liquid silver moving through her, even that tiny bit of magic. As though she's alive, for the first time in a long time. When she looks at the cuff, she can see _into_ it, down to the latticework of molecules, down to the atoms, each one vibrating in the middle of its own field of emptiness.

And it's just solid metal. Nothing electronic, nothing tracking her at all.

It comes apart with almost ridiculous ease, and then it's just a hunk of metal in her hands, nothing more.

#

Darcy waits for a day. Two days. A week.

The snow keeps falling, but no one comes.

#

The next time she sleeps, she does so in the Master's bedroom. All night, she skates on the surface of dreams, never quite sinking down into any one of them.

That small piece of magic still moves through her, silver and calm. It feels as though it's waiting.

She's aware of that hidden door, the key which she flung somewhere in this room. She hasn't searched for it. It, too, is waiting.

#

Darcy wakes to white stillness.

She left the curtains open as she slept: the snow is halfway up the glass, and all she can see of the world is a slice of grey sky. No snow is falling, and the air feels crisp and cold.

The magic is moving within her, a slow ebb and flow. It's soothing, like sleeping in earshot of the ocean, like being rocked, being held.

She's drifting off to sleep again when she hears a noise deeper in the house. Like a footstep, shoes crunching over broken glass. Adrenaline surges within her, and the magic stills, freezing solid again.

It's probably just Fionnula or Edith, she tells herself, but she grabs a heavy book, the closest thing to a weapon she can find, pads as silently as she can on socked feet towards the kitchen.

The door is cracked open just enough for her to snatch glimpses of the person who is standing there, looking down at the broken glass which is still strewn across the floor. Tall, dark hair, dark clothes.

And then he turns just enough so she can see his aquiline profile. Loki is here.


	4. Chapter 4

Suddenly Darcy is cold, she is _freezing_, and she starts to shiver so hard that her fingers slip on the book. It falls to the floor with a heavy thud, the sound echoing through the house.

Loki turns sharply at the sound. For a moment, everything stills as they stare at each other through the cracked door.

The magic within her stills, becomes a solid, dark thing. Not ice this time, just an inert blackness. It feels as though nothingness has become something real, lodged deep within her, both utterly heavy and weightless at the same time.

An echo of that voice courses through her. Tells her to run, to hide, to be anywhere but here.

Almost without being conscious of it, Darcy takes a step back. A piece of broken glass slices into her heel, a sharp bright pain. And it _hurts_, hurts in a way that she can't remember anything hurting that much before. She leans against the wall, lifts her socked foot. The cut is tiny, barely bleeding at all. The blood is bright red, clotting quickly to brown. She pinches out the piece of glass. It is a slender as a needle, tipped with red. Like a tiny arrow.

When she looks up, Loki is standing in the now open door. He is dressed in a slim fitting suit, a green scarf looped around his neck. He looks well, the gauntness that had marked him in New York filled out now. His hair is still long, though it's neatly groomed now instead of neglected. He looks alive. More alive than anything here.

Darcy sets her foot down gingerly. There's a small twinge of pain, then nothing. There's no other glass on the floor here, but she stays where she is, half afraid that she'll step on another shard. She's still shivering, her fingers going numb.

Loki's brow is furrowed. "Darcy?"

When she starts to answer, her teeth are chattering so much that her words come out only as broken syllables. She doesn't remember ever being this cold before. She didn't even know it was possible to be this cold and still be alive.

Loki sweeps her up in his arms, and his body feels almost feverish against hers. He sets her down on the couch in the living room, piles blankets on her. The radiators creak and pop as he switches them on, and he lights the fire that has been set in the fireplace. Edith's work, Darcy presumes, though she's not noticed it before now. There's a pile of split wood beside the fire, too, which she also hasn't noticed.

Darcy is still cold, so cold that her shivering has gone to a deadly stillness, when Loki brings her a mug of coffee. She looks down at the dark liquid, waiting for her stomach to rebel. There's no nausea, and so she takes a hesitant sip. It stays down, and she gulps the rest of the coffee scalding, small pinpricks of pain shooting through her fingers where they're pressed against the warmth of the mug.

Finally, she feels a little of the cold thawing.

The sound of broken glass being swept up comes from the kitchen. The microwave beeps, and when Loki returns, he's carrying a tray holding a bowl of soup and crackers, another mug of coffee.

Darcy's stomach twists with almost painful hunger, and she falls on the soup, barely chewing each mouthful before she swallows. Only when the tray is empty does she finally stop shivering.

Loki takes the tray from her, sets it down on a table. He pauses, scanning the room, and then takes the chair furthest away from her, despite the fact that there is more than enough space beside Darcy on the couch for him. Something in her retreats, curls up.

He sits formally, back straight and fingers laced together. He is not wearing his ring. "Do you need me to speak to someone?"

Darcy blinks. "What?"

"The radiators, the fire. These should have been explained to you. This is not intended to be-" He breaks off. One of his fingers worries the nails of his opposite hand. "People have been known to freeze to death out here in winter."

"And I thought I was on a tropical vacation." Darcy is aware of the caustic note in her voice, and she does not care. "I haven't been well, that's all."

Loki's eyes flick, just for a moment, to where her right wrist is tucked beneath the blankets. The scar itches, and Darcy has to curl her other hand into a fist to stop herself from scratching at it. Loki shifts his weight, and the sleeve of his jacket rides up just enough to reveal the edge of a black cuff on his wrist. He noticed Darcy looking at it. "It is part of the bargain," he says.

Darcy is glad for the blankets which cover her, for they mean that Loki cannot see that she's removed her own cuff. A thin thread of panic rises in her. She remembers seeing _into_ the metal, seeing how to remove it. She doesn't remember what she did with the cuff once she removed it. Was it on the kitchen floor with the broken glass?

A particularly strong gust of wind buffets the house, whistles through invisible cracks and chinks. It sounds as though the house is singing, or that it is an animal howling into the emptiness. Through the window, Darcy can see that it has started to snow again.

Loki is looking at her, his fingers rubbing over his cuff. Darcy grasps for the first thing that she can think of to distract him.

"How did you get here, anyway?" she asks. "I thought all the roads would be snowed in."

Loki smiles thinly. "Snow isn't really an issue." His eyes are veiled.

Darcy looks over at the fire. The flames are preferable to the chill she sees in Loki's eyes. "Should I assume that they gave you permission to be here? Or have you pissed them off enough to be banished to the butt end of nowhere, too/"

"Banished?" Loki starts to rise from his seat, then, seeming to think the better of it, rearranges his weight instead, folds his hands in his lap. "This is no banishment, Darcy."

"Then what is it?" There's a thread of anger in Darcy's voice that even she can hear, and beneath the piled blankets, she's growing too warm. "What else can you call being flown to the other side of the world and locked away here? They fucking gave me _crafts_, Loki, like I'm a crazy person. And you know, basket weaving has always been high on my lists of hobbies to cultivate, but I'd kind of like to be able to pick the colour of my own damn baskets." Her voice is rising higher, cracking, and she makes herself pause, take a deep breath. "You tried to take over the fucking world, and all I did was save you."

Loki is the one who looks away then.

"Look, can you ask them if I can exchange all of this for a nice cosy prison cell? Because you know, as far as tropical vacations go, this one kind of sucks."

Loki is worrying his fingers together again, and all she wants is for him to stand up, to cross the room, to take her in his arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay.

But he does not stand, and he does not even meet her eyes.

Darcy tosses off the blankets, stands. A small part of her mind cheers when she manages to _stay_ standing. "Why are you even here? Because if you're just out to soothe your own conscience about something, then fuck you. Fuck all of you."

She turns her back to him, stalks to the bathroom. Outside, snow is falling in a soft sussurus against the window, and she curses it, curses that once she had looked forward to snow days, to snowballs and snowmen and snow angels. Because the snow means that, even without the cuff, she can't physically leave. She's stuck here, for at least until the thaw.

She takes her time showering, shampooing her hair and blow drying it. Red lipstick, concealer which does little to hide the deep shadows beneath her eyes. Her glasses, though a slight headache begins as soon as she slips them on. Probably time for a new prescription.

"Well, I'll just pop by the mall and see to that as soon as I can," she says to her reflection. "Fuck you too, eyes."

She goes back into the small bedroom, stares at the tangled sheets and blankets on the bed. The whole room smells sour, and when she thinks of the days she spent in bed, drugged with Fionnula's tea, they blur together. Maybe she really had been sick. Hallucinating, probably, from god knows whatever the woman had put into that tea. She resolves to throw out the other tins as soon as possible.

She dresses in layers of wool, stamps her feet into her hiking boots. Strips the sheets from the bed, then moves into the large bedroom and strips that bed, too.

When she passes through the kitchen on the way to the laundry, she scans the floor for any sign of the cuff. It's nowhere to be seen.

Fresh sheets wait in the linen cupboard, and she makes up both beds. Both of the rooms hold that sour, sick scent, and she wishes that she could open the windows to air them out. She makes a mental note to search for candles or anything to scent the rooms.

When she finally goes back into the living room, she's not certain if she hopes that Loki will be there or if he'll be gone.

He's still there. He's unlooped his scarf and draped it over the back of his chair. His hands are still twisted together, and he's staring into the fire, though she suspects he's not seeing a thing.

Darcy sits down in the same seat she had been in before. She tucks her legs beneath her, folds the blankets just to have something to do with her hands.

"Is there a reason that Jane isn't answering my emails?" she asks. "Is she okay?"

Loki flinches slightly. "Jane is well."

Darcy's hands tighten on the blanket she's folding. "So she's just glad to be rid of me, then?"

Loki stares into the fire.

She tosses the blanket aside, not caring that she undoes the folding she just did. "Why am I here? I thought everything was going to be okay. Things were supposed to be _okay_."

He looks up, and she sees that vulnerability in him that she'd glimpsed several times before. Like the boy looking out of the man's eyes. "The things I did, Darcy…there has to be penance."

"But Asgard, Thor. The council-"

"This is Midgard, Darcy. It is Midgard that I wronged. That I owe penance."

"Penance? Do I owe penance, too? Everything with Hel, I never meant for any of that to happen. I was just so _alone_, and things were falling apart and I had _nothing_ and I had _no one_. And here I am in the middle of winter, alone again, and you don't exactly look as though you're starving. What _penance_ are you doing?"

The flames of the fire flicker in his eyes. He rubs his finger over the place where the twisted ring had been; in the firelight, she can just see a faint scar there, as though the twisted metal had been ripped away. "Being away from you."

And then he is gone, vanished, teleported away, leaving Darcy alone once more.

#

Darcy stays where she is for a long time, staring at the empty seat where Loki had been. The green woollen scarf he had been wearing is still slung over the back of the chair. She's afraid to touch it, afraid that it will dissolve to a shower of light beneath her fingers.

Finally she makes herself get up, turn her back on the scarf, go into the kitchen. The broken glass is gone from the floor, even the smallest shards cleared away. The coffee pot is humming, electronics working to keep the half full coffee pot warm. Abruptly, Darcy is aware of the weight of the soup and coffee in her stomach. It feels too warm, like a sun burning inside her.

The magic within her is moving again, that frozen ocean lapping slowly to and fro. It soothes her, and she feels its chill sliding through her veins, freezing everything. She is ice, and ice cannot feel.

She finds a bucket beneath the sink, fills it. Goes back into the living room and douses the fire. Smoke fills the room, thick and grey, but she breathes it in and in, feels like she could swallow all of the darkness in the world.

The green scarf is just a scarf, the wool thick with smoke now, no scent at all of the man who had worn it. Maybe he hadn't even been here at all. She had a wardrobe of clothes that didn't belong to her, who knows what it contained. She turns off the radiators, tosses the scarf into the basket of hand washing that she knows she will never get around to doing.

She's whistling when she goes back into the living room, though she doesn't recognise the tune at all. It's assonant, notes that climb over one another, clash together. It reminds her of breaking glass.

An electronic beeping cuts across the tune, fracturing the notes. The last few fall from her lips, small broken things. It takes her a few minutes to realise that the chiming is coming from the computer.

An application she's never seen before has popped up a dialog box asking if she wants to accept a call. Darcy hesitates, her hand hovering over the mouse, then clicks to accept.

The screen goes white, then dissolves to an image of Jane. She's sitting against a white background, the white so bright that it yellows her skin, makes her look ill. She's wearing a bright red scarf knotted around her throat. The colour only washes her out more, ruddy reflections catching in the hollows beneath her eyes.

"Darcy?" Jane asks. She looks down at what Darcy presumes is her keyboard, presses buttons. "Can you hear me? The connection isn't good."

The magic has stilled in Darcy again, become that black nothingness. Something rises in her, and her body settles back in the chair, feels her face form into the kind of sardonic expression the old Darcy had so easily worn. "Can hear you. See you, too. Did you snaffle Thor's cloak while he was sleeping?"

Jane touches the scarf at her throat. She smiles, a fleeting, fragile expression. "The video isn't working from your end. Some kind of interference."

A gust of wind rattles the house, whistles through the cracks. "That would be a metric assload of snow, I'd say."

Jane frowns. "Still, Stark said that the weather shouldn't matter. Even the audio keeps breaking up." She presses more buttons, then thumps the side of her monitor. The image of her breaks up, bleeds white, then reforms.

"I suspect that a calibration tap isn't going to fix anything," Darcy says. She shrugs her shoulders, taps her feet on the ground, feeling her body shift around her. There's a weight against her ankle, and when she looks down, she sees the tracking cuff back in place. A thin thread of cold rises up her spine. She'd taken it off, hadn't she?

"Darcy? You still there?" Jane asks.

Darcy pulls her attention away from the cuff. "Just going cheerfully mad, that's all." She wiggles her hand so her sleeve rides up, darts glances at the scars. Still white. Just scars, just blood, that's what the doctors said. Normal. "How have things been? And if you say fine, I'll find some way to reach through this screen and poke you."

Jane looks quickly off screen, then back. "Things are…complicated. I'm sorry that I haven't been able to call you before now. I'm…we're…things are complicated."

Darcy shifts her weight, feeling the cuff move against her skin. It had been a dream, that was all. Part of whatever sickness she'd had. This was real. "Complicated, as in, a megalomaniac is trying to take over the world? Or more like my boyfriend is a gorgeous hunk of god and we don't get out of bed much?"

Jane flushes. "You know that Thor and I…we're not Thor and I."

"Oh. Yeah. I forgot." Darcy grips the edge of the desk, curls her fingers against the wood. Real. This is real.

Jane leans closer to the camera. "Darce? Are you okay?"

"Oh, just peachy. The end of the world is fine, too, if you were wondering. Lots of snow."

"Do you need anything? The woman we sent, she said you hadn't asked for anything. Not even chocolate."

The thought of chocolate makes Darcy's stomach twist. She swallows hard, hoping that she's not going to have to make an undignified dash to the bathroom. "You're been talking to Edith?"

"You don't think we'd just leave you there, do you, Darce?"

"Well, considering that that's exactly what happened, then yeah." Darcy's fingers tighten on the desk, and she hears the wood creak. "Why am I here, Jane?"

"It was…convenient." Jane glances off screen again, looks back. She looks almost as unhappy as Darcy feels. "You just have to trust us. Okay?"

Darcy forces a smile, just in case Jane can actually see her. "What about…" Her throat is dry, and she swallows hard. "How is…" His voice catches in her throat, rasps out past her lips. "How is Loki?"

Jane's eyes harden slightly. "He's under control."

"Under control? What does that mean?"

"It means that you don't have to worry about him, Darce. You're safe."

A crack splits the air. Darcy looks down, sees that she's managed to sink her nails into the wooden desk. One long splinter has pierced the skin beneath her thumb nail, a bead of blood welling. In the pale light coming from the computer screen, it looks black sheened with blue.

"You really don't have to worry," Jane continues. "Asgard even figured out some kind of magical cuff for him to wear, so he isn't able to do anything more than basic magic. You're really safe. You don't have to worry about him hurting you again."

Darcy wrenches her fingers out of the desk. Several of her other nails are broken down past the quick, blood beginning to ooze from the raw skin. She doesn't feel anything but numbness. "You realise that we walked into the Bifrost together, right? That I walked into _Hell_ to bring him back? He was supposed to teach me how to-"

"Teach you how to what?" Jane is leaning closer to the screen again. So close that Darcy can see that her eyes are bloodshot. Jane hasn't been sleeping.

The magic is still within Darcy, a vast echoing nothingness. Before they had stepped into the Bifrost, Loki had promised Darcy he would teach her how to use her magic. Loki had also promised to stay at her side.

"Nothing," Darcy says. "Nothing."

"Darce, are you sure you're okay?" Jane asks. "Loki's influence is strong. Just look at Erik-"

"Bullshit." Darcy curls her fingers into her palms. Splinters bite deeper into her skin, and blood flows in thin trickles. "What Loki went through, wasn't that enough for any of you? What are you _doing_ to him? Why am I _here_?"

"Darcy, I-" Someone speaks off camera, their voice muffled, and Jane starts. "I have to go. I'll be checking in weekly, okay? If you need anything, let me know."

The connection is severed abruptly, and Darcy is left staring at a pure white screen. She sits there for a long time, watching the blood drip from her fingers, still feeling nothing at all.

It had all been supposed to be okay. When she had stepped into the Bifrost, hand in hand with Loki, she had been so _certain_ that everything was going to be okay, in the way that nothing had ever been okay for her ever before.

The magic thaws within her, rocks slowly to and fro. It's soothing, like being rocked in her mother's arms. She closes her eyes, wraps her hands around herself, sways with it.

What had she been thinking, anyway? People like Darcy didn't get the happy-ever-after ending. SHIELD would use Loki, as they used everyone, and eventually he would go back to Asgard, take his seat on the Council, and he would forget all about Darcy Lewis, stupid little mortal.

Except she remembered him standing before the fire, remembered him saying that his penance was _being away from her_, even as she rocked with the tides of the magic. Remembered also that he hadn't been wearing his ring.

God of lies. God of mischief.

She unwraps her arms, uncurls her hands. The broken pieces of the ring have cut her skin again; she feels those injuries as little as she does the ones to her nails. Slowly, she pulls the ring off, waits to feel something. To feel anything.

The weight of the cuff is gone from her ankle again. Maybe she's going truly mad.

She drops the ring to the floor. It makes no sound as it falls, then rolls away into the shadows.


	5. Chapter 5

The snow continues to fall, climbing higher and higher up the windows.

The days slide into routine: Darcy wakes, showers, dresses. She eats, she reads, she watches movies. She cannot recall the details of either once she has finished watching or reading. At night, she lies in bed and stares at the shifting shadows on the ceiling, listens to the snow whisper against the window. Sometimes she thinks she sleeps, but she's never quite sure.

It grows colder, and the days grow shorter, until the nights seem to spin on forever.

The cuff remains solid on her ankle, apparently inert metal. Sometimes when she presses a finger against it, she thinks that she can almost feel it vibrating, can almost hear something like the sound of a tuning fork pitched just too low for human ears.

Jane calls once a week, and each time she looks more exhausted, says less and less. She wears scarves wrapped around her throat: always bright colours, as though she is seeking to make herself look more well than she feels.

The days roll on and on, and Darcy stays in the same place. She does not feel a thing.

#

And then Darcy wakes to find that the snow has stopped falling. The portion of the window that is not banked high with snow reveals the blue sky. The topmost layers of the snow glitter where the ice has melted to water.

She pulls herself out of the narrow bed in the small bedroom. Looking closer, she can see that the sky is fretted with high, thin clouds. When she touches the window, the glass almost feels warm.

A knock on the door startles her. Her fingers slide down the window, leave marks that look as though someone has clawed at the glass.

When she opens the door, she finds Fionnula standing on the other side. She's wrapped in layers of black and grey wool, the tip of her nose bright red. Her basket is hooked over one arm, its contents covered with a chequered red and white cloth.

"Aren't you cold, lass?" Fionnula asks.

Darcy looks down at herself. She's wearing thin leggings and a loose shirt, both the vague grey that the sky has been until now. Her feet are bare. "Not really."

"Cold-blooded one, then are you?" Fionnula smiles, her gold teeth glinting. "You're a lucky one, then, lass. My old bones, they ache and ache. No forgetting that it's midwinter for me."

Darcy glances up at the sky. "It's midwinter?"

"I don't suppose you celebrate anything like it over there. Tonight is the longest night of the year. Don't let that sky fool you, lass, it's just the Lady's way of giving us a little grace before the real cold begins."

Darcy looks beyond Fionnula. The path leading up to the house has been shovelled, piles of snow neatly stacked to either side. Long swirling patterns have been traced into the sides of the snow banks. They remind her somewhat of runes, though they look nothing like them. From what she can see of the road beyond the snow, it has been cleared too.

Fionnula smiles again. "My lad's work, that is. Everything has to be cleared to all of the houses before midwinter eve."

"Your son?"

"Not of my flesh, but my son all the same. We look after one another out here. None of us have anyone else." Fionnula held out the basket. "I made you some bread. There's the last of the honey, there, and blackberry jam. Some tea. A special brew for midwinter, to help drive away the frost, bring the sun back."

Darcy tastes something like an echo of the valerian bitterness in the back of her throat, swallows hard. She doesn't want to take the basket, but she also doesn't want to be rude. Fionnula won't know if she throws the tea away. "Thank you. I have plenty of food, but nothing fresh."

Fionnula nods slowly, as though Darcy has confirmed something. "There will be a bonfire tonight. In the fields between the woods. You'll be able to see them from your windows, if you like. You're welcome to join us, too, help us sing the sun back."

"Who's us? You and your son?"

"Oh, there are a good dozen of us scattered around these hills and valleys, lass. We will take no offence if you choose just to watch from the windows. We all know how it is to want to be alone. But you will be most welcome if you want to join us." She dips her head into something like a bow. "Blessings of the season, to you, Darcy Lewis."

Fionnula turns and makes her way down the cleared pathway, turns into the road and vanishes from sight. Darcy shivers, though, she still isn't cold, and tries to remember if she told the woman her full name.

Before she closes the door, she reaches out, runs her fingers along the curving mark in the nearest snow bank. The snow is packed tight, as though someone has leant heavily upon it as they etched the marks. She notices then that the splinters embedded in her fingers from when she dug them into the wooden desk have almost grown out, the skin around them only mildly inflamed. She drags her fingers across the snow, and they slide out one by one. The snow feels almost warm beneath her skin, and does not melt at all.

#

Darcy pops open the tin of tea, peers inside. The herbs inside are unknown to her, but there's none of the bitter scent of valerian. The mixture is almost spicy, warm and sweet.

The bread that Fionnula gave her is already half gone, the food sitting solid within her belly, grounding her even as it makes her feel a little dizzy. She feels almost as though she's been sipping wine all afternoon instead of sitting with a book in the living room, watching the light fade all too quickly from the sky.

It is full dark now, and she can hear voices outside, just far enough away from the house that she cannot make out what they are saying. She doesn't know if its because Fionnula told her that it was midwinter, but the air feels almost alive, filled with potential.

She closes her eyes, focuses on the magic within her. It feels much warmer, a liquid sea rocking her to and fro. She lets herself move with it, swaying from side to side, her arms moving out in languid half circles. And then she is spinning, she is dancing, and laughter is bubbling up inside her as she keeps moving, keeps dancing, eyes still closed.

Dizziness rises, and she opens her eyes, reaches out for the first solid thing she can find to stop herself from falling. Her fingers close on the edge of a woven basket, and she looks down on a pile of tangled green wool.

Loki's scarf.

Her hand reaches out, fingers closing on the soft wool. She lifts it, static rising as the scarf slides against another pile of wool beneath - Fionnula's shawl.

The black scent of smoke has faded from the scarf now, and all she can smell is the faint tang of leather and dark musk. In all of the stilted conversations Darcy has had with Jane, Jane has assured her again and again that Loki is bound from using magic, that Loki cannot do any spell more complex than lighting a candle.

_Had_ Loki even been here? The scarf could belong to anyone. Could belong to no one.

Darcy stuffs it back into the basket, pulls out the shawl. A faint floral scent clings to it, something like night blooming flowers, but darkened slightly. She runs the knitted wool through her hands, and the feel of it is soothing.

Voices come from outside, closer now, and she goes to one of the front windows, looks out.

She cannot see any people in the darkness, just lights here and there: small fires burning along what it unmistakably a trail leading to the field between the stands of woods. A flicker as someone passes before one of the fires, and a shout, a voice raised in what sounds like pure joy.

And Darcy cannot stay inside. She goes into the main bedroom, opens the closet there. She has a vague memory of the closet being empty before, but now there's a dress hanging from the rack. It's black, long sleeved and full skirted, plain in cut. She pulls it down, takes it into the other room.

In the bathroom, she bathes, sponging her skin with clean cold water. Scrubs her face clean, runs her fingers through her hair. Her glasses sit on the side of the sink, and she picks them up, then puts them back down again. Without them, her vision is clear enough, and suddenly she wants nothing standing between her and the world. She pulls on the dress, the fabric settling around her body as though it had been tailored just for her.

The cuff around her ankle feels cold. She reaches down to adjust it, and her vision slides into that strange place again where she can almost see into the depths of the metal. This time, she can see something else playing deep within, something like light. Not knowing how, she twists the light, and the cuff pops open. It is a simple thing to reseal it, to reform that light into a whole.

She sets the cuff on the sink next to her glasses, and goes out into the night.

#

The sky is clear of clouds for the first time since Darcy arrived in Scotland, and it is filled with more stars than she has seen in her life. She can even see the band of what she presumes is the Milky Way, which has never seen anywhere but in photos. It has always been too bright in the cities she has lived in, and when she lived elsewhere, her last thought was for looking up at the stars.

She stands still, just staring up at the star-filled sky. It all seems so vast, so impossible. She is awed and feared at the same time, just thinking of the universe going on and on forever.

Out there was Asgard, the rest of the Nine Realms. Who knows what else that even Asgard does not know about?

Darcy rubs the place where the twisted ring had been on her finger. The callouses on the neighbouring fingers where the broken pieces of metal rubbed are softening already. Soon they will fall away, and the skin will be unmarked, as though she never wore the ring at all.

The magic within her moves in a slow spiral; she feels something akin to sympathy rising from it. She wonders how she lived her life without it now. Even half frozen, it feels as much a part of her as her own limbs.

The sound of a drum rises in the night, pulling her attention away from the stars and the magic. It is a deep, slow beat that reverberates through the earth, rises through her bones. Her feet are bare, but she feels no chill where they press against the pavement. Suddenly all she wants to do is stand on bare earth, no concrete in between.

She walks down the pathway to the road, the asphalt rough beneath her feet. The small fires are burning in shallow bowls resting on top of the snow banks on either side of the road. The bowls are the same white as the snow, and are inscribed with the same swirling patterns. The lights line the road as far as she can see in both directions. She takes a deep breath, taste the blue chill of the snow, the smoke of the fires. There is more than just wood burning in those bowls, she realises. Herbs and resins, though she cannot identify them, the smoke rising in white spirals up towards the stars.

When she first stepped onto the road, the lines of flames seemed an unbroken line. Now, she can see that another pathway leads off the main road, a line of flames that curves across the fields towards the Blackwood. Her eyes have adjusted, she supposes, and moves off the road.

The earth has been swept clear of snow, the banks that rise on either side of her rising higher than she is tall. She can just see the flickering lights of the flames, the smoke rising up into the sky. She remembers reading once about roadways that were trodden and cleared so often that the surrounding land ended up higher than the road, resulting in a track that was cut into the earth itself. It feels something like that, walking through this pathway.

It also feels something like the labyrinth that she had walked in Central Park. A frisson of something dark moves through her magic, and she reaches out, lets her fingers move along the swirling lines cut into the snow. Something about the rise and fall of that pattern is soothing, and all thought of the labyrinth falls away, that darkness receding. There is only Darcy and the pathway and the stars above watching.

Apart from the drumming, everything is silent. Her feet make no sound as she walks across the ground, toes curling into the earth to press against the frozen layer of ground beneath. Whoever swept up the snow has loosened the soil, and she can smell the rich fertile scent of it, even as she breathes the chill of midwinter.

The full skirt of Darcy's dress slides against her skin as she walks, and the walk becomes a swaying dance that moves in time to the steady beating of the drum. It feels good to move, to feel the slide of her muscles and bones, to feel her heart slow to synchronise with the drumbeat.

The snow banks on either side of her decrease in height slowly, and when she comes to the end of the pathway, they are low enough for her to rest her hands on them. She presses her palms into the places where the swirling patterns end; the snow does not melt beneath her touch.

At the edge of the Blackwood, they wait. They are garbed in black like Darcy, their clothing much heavier. Surrounding them is a circle of flames burning in those shallow bowls, white smoke rising thick into the air. The snow has been entirely swept away here, all the way to the edge of the trees.

The scars on Darcy's wrist and over her heart prickle as she looks over towards the woods. Is that tree still there, inscribed with black from her touch? There's a moment only of worry rising like edged steel, and then the drum is beating again, and she forgets nothing but its sound.

One of the black-clad people moves towards Darcy, hands outstretched. It takes her a moment to recognise Fionnula, her hair loose around her shoulders. She wears a black dress almost identical to Darcy's, a thick shawl overtop and heavy boots beneath.

"You are welcome," she says. Her voice has the deep, resonant tones of a ritual. "Will you join us in the circle, of free will and in trust, to sing the sun back to the earth?"

Beyond Fionnula, Darcy sees now, is a bonfire, the wood woven together to form a structure that rises up against the stars. There are perhaps a half dozen people in the circle surrounding it. As though Darcy's arrival is some cue, they start moving, gliding in and out of the small pools of light cast by the fires. Something in the smoke makes it hard for Darcy to focus her eyes on them, and all she can see is that they are pale of hair, apart from one, whose black hair shines like a raven's wing.

Fionnula is holding Darcy's hands, though Darcy does not remember her taking them. One long finger just touches the edge of the scar on Darcy's wrist. The magic is moving within Darcy again, rocking back and forth in a motion that she recognises now is part of a greater spiral. Everything was spiralling in, flowing and moving, _becoming_.

Fionnula squeezes Darcy's hands gently. "Will you join us, daughter?"

"I will," Darcy says, and steps into the circle.

Some invisible weight lifts from Darcy's shoulders as she enters the circle of flames. Without thought, she is moving with the others in a sliding, serpentine dance, each of them reaching out to touch hands lightly as they pass each other. Darcy still cannot focus on their faces, but it is something that seems right and proper. She glimpses the black-haired man across the other side of the circle, but she never seems to pass him in the dance.

The dance goes on and on, Darcy's body moving so effortlessly that she feels as though she could keep dancing forever.

Then abruptly, the drum goes silent and the dance stops.

Darcy blinks, for there is only herself, Fionnula and the black-haired man standing around the unlit bonfire, the others nowhere to be seen. In the firelight, the black-haired man's eyes glint amber.

Fionnula begins to sing, music without words that Darcy can make out, just notes that rise and fall, sweeping up and down. Darcy lets her eyes close, can see the music behind her eyes as a soft green light moving in spirals and curves. The magic within her stills, as though it, too, is listening.

The last, long note of Fionnula's song draws out, then fades. Everything is still. Waiting.

Darcy opens her eyes to see Fionnula standing before her, holding out a burning torch. The wood is pale, and shadows play across its surface. Darcy is glad for the smoke fogging her eyes, for she cannot see if the shadows are mere shadows, or branded marks like the ones she created in the dream that was not a dream.

As if she is in a dream now, she takes the torch from Fionnula, thrusts it into the bonfire. A blue flame rises, flickering to deep sapphire. The drumming begins again as the flame catches, sparks rising up into the air. All of them are sapphire, and Darcy feels small bursts of warmth in the magic within her, as though stars are bursting into life within her.

The drumming comes faster and faster as the bonfire catches with almost preternatural speed. The smoke the drifts from within smells sweet, as though the wood has been soaked in honey or wine.

The bonfire burns for a heartbeat, then two, blazing in a mingle of amber and green and blue.

And then, in an instant, the flames die, the drum goes silent again. For a moment, the charred shapes of the branches stands against the stars, then the skeleton of the bonfire falls to ash, a grey plume that rolls out from the centre of the circle.

Everything goes grey, the small fires doused beneath the ash.

Darcy blinks, trying to clear the ash from her eyes. It doesn't sting, it just feels like a veil someone has drawn over her sight. One which she cannot clear.

The magic is spiralling again, swirling inwards, vibrating.

And then light pierces the grey, and the veil falls away. It takes Darcy a moment to realise that that light is the first ray of the rising sun. It takes her a moment longer to realise that where the bonfire had stood, now a man stands.

He is tall, well over seven feet in height, his shoulders broad and his limbs powerful. And he is naked, apart from a covering of green leaves. His eyes rest on Darcy, and they too are green in green, and he inclines his head, and turns and makes for the woods, vanishing quickly from sight in the shadows beneath the trees.

Something cold against her hand. A silver flask, pressed there by Fionnula.

"It's mead," Fionnula says. "Tradition. It helps, lass."

Darcy unscrews the cap, takes a swallow. The back of her throat is coated with ash, and the mead combines with it to create something that burns like fire as she swallows it down.

Fionnula nods, then takes the flask back, drinks. The dark-haired man comes around the remains of the fire to take the flask. He drinks, his eyes on Darcy.

The sun is rising, though grey clouds are beginning to thicken again, its rays already beginning to be obscured.

"What was that?" Darcy asks. Her voice is smoke-roughened, and it hurts to talk.

"We sang back the sun," Fionnula says. She takes the flask back, tucks it into a pocket of her dress. "It's tradition around here."

Darcy looks over to the woods. Had they seen the leaf-covered man? Was it just a hallucination?

Fionnula places a hand on the dark-haired man's sleeve. "Darcy Lewis, this is my son, Bran."

Bran does not speak, simply inclines his head. It is eerily similar to the gesture the leaf-covered man had made. Neither Bran nor Fionnula show any sign that they had seen the strange man. A hallucination, Darcy decides. Probably from staying awake all night. Probably.

"You should go and eat something," Fionnula says. "It helps, getting food in your belly. Wash, and sleep." She takes Darcy's hands again, and her skin is hot, her heartbeat thudding beneath her skin. "It will start snowing again soon."

It starts snowing lightly as Darcy makes her way to the house. Moving automatically, she follows Fionnula's instructions: she eats, she showers, she lies down.

When she wakes, the snow has fallen so thickly that all trace of the pathways and circle were gone, as though they had never been there at all.


	6. Chapter 6

Darcy blinks in the bright sunshine that spills in through the open window of the master's bedroom.

She closes her eyes. The sunshine illuminates the blood in the thin skin of her eyelids. She can actually see the motion of her blood moving there, her pulse dancing beneath her own skin.

She opens her eyes. Sunshine is still spilling in through the open windows, dust motes swirling in the illumination. It looks uncannily like the motion of air following the passage of a person through the room, though she knows its only the motion of the air coming in through the open window. She's lying in the big bed, fully dressed apart from her boots. They sit neatly on the floor, their toes on the very edge of the patch of sunlight.

Darcy closes her eyes again, turns away from the light. She remembers the ritual. She'd come back to the house, she had eaten, showered and slept.

She's not hungry, so she knows that she must have eaten as she remembers.

There's still a faint scent of smoke clinging to her hair, but she can smell the floral scent of shampoo, too, so she knows that she showered.

She feels more refreshed from sleep than she has in months.

The trouble is that, along with eating and showering, she also remembers going to sleep in the small bedroom. Remembers waking after a full night of sleep, standing and looking out of the window and seeing how the snow had covered the circle and swept tracks completely.

It feels as though someone has taken the movie of her knife, cut the film and spliced together two different scenes. Waking once, then waking again, no gap in between.

A deep, sick feeling twists in her stomach. It feels like snakes curling and uncurling in her gut. It reminds her all too much of the feeling she had always gotten as a child when her father had cornered her alone in a room. It reminds her of the feeling of Hel looking at her.

She swings her legs out of bed, sets her feet down on the floor. The boards beneath her are warmed by the sun, soothing. Maybe she slept the clock around again. Maybe she just sleep walked between the bedrooms.

Maybe she's going crazy.

Stuck out here alone, maybe she made up Fionnula and Bran, the midwinter ritual.

Maybe she never walked out of Helheim, and she is dead and this is hell.

The last thought sends a ripple through the magic within her. It feels something like a mother soothing a child, a non-verbal reassurance that everything was going to be okay.

She stares at the wall, remembering how she had made a doorway between two rooms in Asgard, though the rooms had been shielded against magic. She wishes so much that she could make a doorway now, that Loki could be on the other side.

The light slides across the floor, the sun inscribing an arc across the sky. The air grows warm, and it seems that she can smell _green_ on it: the scent of growing things, the scent of the world waking up from a winterlong sleep.

The moving light catches on something that had been hidden in the shadows. When Darcy stands and moves closer, she sees that the object is in fact two objects: the key for the hidden panel in the wall and the ring Frigga gifted her. The ring hangs on the shaft of the key, the two of them intertwined. That sick twisting snakelike feeling comes again, for though she remembers tossing the key into a corner in this room, she does not remember throwing the ring in here.

She walks quickly through the house to the kitchen. Sunlight slants through the windows here, too, catches in the full coffee pot. Suddenly the room feels too small, the walls too close, the air suffocating.

Darcy shoves her feet into boots, goes outside.

The sky is pure, clear blue, the kind of deep cerulean that she's always associated with the middle of summer. The sun is high, but the air still holds a chill, and there is still snow on the ground and banked up against the sides of the house. When she pokes a finger through the surface crust, she can hear the sound of running water below.

There is nothing growing here, and the trees in the Blackwood are still bereft of leaves. She wonders if she imagined the scent of green that she smelled inside the house.

And then a breeze lifts, brings that fertile scent again. It comes from the Blackwood.

Darcy's boots crunch through the snow as she crosses the fields to the woods. The wet mud is black, and sucks at the heels of her boots. By the time she reaches the edge of the trees, her boot soles are coated with a thick layer of muck.

That scent comes again, and she follows it into the trees. Dappled light moved around her, and when she looks down at the ground, she can see the shapes of leaves moving in those shadows. When she looks up, there are only the naked branches and the blue sky beyond.

The bottle tree sits in the middle of the small clearing, the cobalt glass of the bottles even brighter in the sunlight. The glass chimes together softly as the branches sway in the breeze. The magic within her rocks gently in the same rhythm as the tree, and she realises that the light catching in the blue glass is the exact same colour as the magic itself.

The black marks are still inscribed on the pale bark of the tree, but they at almost hidden beneath a flush of new growth, tender green leaves uncurling from buds all over the tree. The light filtering through the green of the leaves turns the black marks to a luminescent green, an echo of the colour that her Hel-given marks had gone when Loki had touched them with his magic.

A pang of longing for Loki grips her, almost physically painful in its intensity. When she hears a footfall behind her, Darcy turns, half expecting to see him standing there.

For a moment, she almost thinks that she does see Loki: the man standing behind her is tall, dark-haired. Then he steps forward, and she sees that his eyes are not green, but amber. Bran.

"You found the bottle tree," he says. His voice is oddly accented, intonations that she cannot place. He stays a good distance away from her, his hands held out to his sides to display empty palms. Everything in his posture declares that he is no threat. "Fionnula wasn't certain if you had come out this far."

Darcy glances over at the tree, at the black-green marks which cover it. Surely those told Fionnula and Bran that she had been here before. Unless that really had just been a dream, and the marks had nothing to do with her. She glances down at her left wrist. The edge of the claw scar is just visible, and in the dappled light she cannot see anything of the other marks Hel had given her at all. She breathes out slowly, a tension she had not been aware of easing from her spine.

"Should it be growing leaves at midwinter?" Darcy asks. "Won't they just freeze when more snow falls? I assume there is going to be more snow."

"Of a certainly, Darcy Lewis." Bran looks up at the sky. Sunlight catches in his eyes, turns them to liquid gold. Even his skin is gold-tinged, as though the light of the sun has gathered beneath his flesh. "I think it will survive." He looks back at Darcy, smiles. "Once upon a time, this was a crossroads. There were paths that led through the old woods, and this is the place that they intersected. Crossroads are places of magic."

Darcy takes a step back. "Magic?"

Bran smiles again. "You don't believe in magic?"

She shrugs one shoulder. "Magic is only science that we don't know the workings of yet, right? Just something that we haven't been able to take apart, see how it works."

"Would you want to, if you could?" Bran's eyes are intense, unblinking. "There's nothing wrong with a little mystery, Darcy Lewis. At one time, everything in the world was mystery."

"At one time, they burned people at the stake for being witches, too," Darcy says.

An unreadable expression crosses Bran's face. "Why do you speak of witches?"

She takes another step back, for all that his body language is still utterly unthreatening. "Fionnula spoke of them, I think. And the bottle tree, that's a witch thing, isn't it?" The bottles behind her chimed softly, making soft music of the breeze. "Though I thought it was a Southern thing. America, that is."

"Haven't you ever wondered why so many myths share features, Darcy Lewis? Why so many cultures worship the same gods with different faces?"

Darcy has moved so far back that she is standing next to the trunk of the tree now. Bran has not moved.

"There are no gods," Darcy says. "Just aliens pretending to be gods so they can get worshipped, so people can sacrifice to them." Her stomach contracts as she remembers Bera and her sacrifice. "There's nothing else."

Bran's eyes drop to her wrist, move to the exact place where her other scar is hidden behind her shirt. "Is there not, Darcy Lewis? Don't you feel the magic of the world waking up?"

Above them, the bottles chime and the leaves whisper; the sound almost seems to mimic speech, the voice of some great hidden thing.

Darcy's heart is pounding, a thin buzzing echoing in her ears. For one horrible moment, she thinks that she's actually going to faint. "I need to get back to the cottage," she says. "I don't feel well."

Bran smiles again, steps back into the gap between two saplings. He folds his hands behind his back. Still unthreatening, but still she skirts as far around him as she can when she passes.

Once she is out of the woods, she glances back. Bran is nowhere to be seen, but just for a moment, she sees something that looks like a face looking out from the branches, eyes burning green as the new growth on the bottle tree.

#

Back in the house, Darcy picks up the ring Frigga made for her. It slides free from the key easily, the key falling back to the floor. The sunlight is fading in the room, and the metal of the ring is cold against her fingers. The broken edges seem smoother as she turns it against her palm, and when she looks closely, it almost looks as though the metal is budding, growing back in the same way a clipped branch might.

In the distance, church bells chime. They sound closer than the village, the sound carrying in the still air, she supposes. Bran had said that the world's magic was waking up. Maybe her magic would, too, if she just tried to use it.

She runs her fingers over the scar on her wrist, the scar over her heart. In the dimming light, she can just see the ghost patterns of Hel's other marks on her arm.

She walked into Helheim, walked out again. She created a passage between the rooms in Asgard, despite wards against magic use.

Surely it would be a small thing to be able to project herself.

Her heart is hammering as she closes the window and curtains, switches on the lights. The bulbs burn with a dull orange glow; the power browned out, she presumes.

Darcy lies down on the bed. Concentrates on the magic inside of her - still spiralling slowly in the same rhythm to the bottle tree's dance - and slips the ring onto her finger.

For a long time, nothing happens. She focuses on the magic, tries to remember how she had made that passageway. It had seemed instinctual then, as easy as the idea of breathing.

It is only when she lets so, when she stops trying to force it, that the magic gives a great lurch within her. She can _see_ it behind her closed eyes: like deep sapphire flames lit here and there by sparks of emerald, and deeper, pure, thick black, darker than night. The magic scours at her from within, and her heart hammers again because she knows that if she doesn't try to direct it, it will burn her up from within.

The thought that comes doesn't surprise her. Loki. She wants to see Loki.

The world tumbles around her, and then she is standing at the side of the bed, looking down on her shadow. The woman lying on the bed appears to be sleeping, her chest rising and falling in a slow, even pattern. She's gained back the weight she lost during the food shortages in New York, and yet she looks drawn all the same. Even in apparent sleep, her brows are drawn together as if in pain, and the muscles of her neck and shoulders are knotted.

Darcy - the Darcy standing beside the bed - rolls her own neck, feels the joints crack and pop. She doesn't want to think too hard about whether the bones and muscles she feels like she's moving are real or not.

"Magic is just science we don't understand yet," she tells herself. "That's all."

She turns to the wall, tries to remember how she had created the passage in Asgard. She visualises a door, a window. Nothing. Visualises having a piece of chalk, drawing a door. Adds the door handle. Nothing.

She tries to walk through the wall. Bounces off it, rubbing her forehead.

"Typical, Darce," she mutters as she pulls herself to her feet. "God, what's the use of having this magic if I can't even make a fucking door-"

She breaks off, because as she speaks, the wall blinks out. Like a projector turned off, the wall and window and curtains are just _gone_. Instead there's just darkness, a black void.

"Well, that's comforting," she says. She glances over her shoulder at her shadow. It is still there, as is the rest of the room. "Some stairs would be nice, maybe. A Wonkavator?"

Nothing happens. The void remains a void.

"Yeah, in case I ever wondered if this magic came from Loki," Darcy grumbles. She extends a hand experimentally into the darkness. The air feels oddly thick, but nothing hinders her movement. "If nothing else, it should be able to find Loki. Right?"

She edges her foot into the darkness. Reassuringly, there's what feels like a solid floor beneath her. It feels odd, slightly spongy beneath her, but it holds her weight well enough.

She steps into the void, and the room behind her blinks out.

Everything is completely dark, the only sound that of her breath shuddering in and out. She forces herself to slow her breathing. Within her, the magic is spiralling faster and faster.

"Okay," Darcy says. Her voice is flat, without echo. "I want to see Loki. Take me to Loki."

The darkness lifts a fraction. She takes that as confirmation that the magic is going to comply, and she starts walking.

The darkness lightens more with every step she takes. The ground beneath her changes, until her boots are crunching over what is unmistakably snow. She shivers as the air grows colder, goose bumps rippling over her skin.

Trees emerge from the grey as if from mist: they are tall and slender, their bark pale and unmarked. When she looks up, she sees that grey clouds are low enough to hide the tops of the trees. A light snow falls; the flakes do not melt when they touch her skin.

Darcy exhales slowly, and her breath plumes white.

She rubs her thumb over the twisted ring on her left hand. Thinks of Loki.

For a long time, nothing. And then she hears the unmistakable sound of a footfall behind her. She turns, her heart thudding, half hoping, half fearing that she will see Loki.

The man standing behind her is not Loki.

Despite the cold, he is dressed only in roughspun trousers, his feet bare against the snow. His hair is long and ragged, gleaming the red that fire flickers to at the edge of flames.

His eyes narrow, and he says nothing.

"Who are you?" Darcy asks.

He takes another step towards her, and she swears she can see flames flickering around his edges, though the snow does not melt beneath him. His eyes go to the scar on her wrist, and she feels something prickling against her skin. The magic within her roils, its spiralling disrupted as though by an unfelt earthquake.

He raises a hand, and this time she _does_ see fire flickering around his fingertips, and she feels something curl deep into the magic, feels it _pull_-

A hand closes on Darcy's shoulder. The magic within Darcy stills, goes cold and black.

"She does not belong to you." The voice is deep as night, horribly familiar to Darcy.

The red-haired man smiled crookedly, drops into a mockery of a bow. The flames around him flicker, and he is gone.

The hand falls from Darcy's shoulder. She stands staring at the place where the red-haired man had been. She does not want to turn around. She will _not_ turn around.

A light touch on Darcy's wrist, on the scarred skin, and she feels something pulls her like invisible strings, pulling her around no matter what she wants.

She wants to close her eyes, she wants to run away, she wants to step back into that black void.

She can do none of these things, can only stare at the woman who stands before her, black skirts trailing in the snow.

Hel.


	7. Chapter 7

Darcy backs away and away, but no matter how much physical distance she puts between herself and Hel, she can still feel the chill of Hel's touch on her shoulder.

Within her, the magic is cold and dark, a vast ocean of nothingness.

"You're…you're supposed to be in Helheim," Darcy says. Her voice wavers, childlike and uncertain. She curls her hands into fists, straightens her spine. In the depths of the black ocean within her, a dull sapphire light shines. "You're not supposed to be here."

Hel laughs. It is a sound like fracturing metal. "And your soul is _supposed_ to belong to me, supplicant." She extends a hand, her claw-like nails clacking together. Something tightens in Darcy's magic, that sapphire light fading instantly. It feels as though Hell has hooked an invisible line between herself and Darcy. "We do not get the things that we deserve, do we? Perhaps some other things should be taken away."

Hel twists her hand, and that invisible line tightens, _pulls_. Pain explodes through Darcy, pressure rising within her rib cage, so intense that she cannot breathe, that she feels her heart still. She drops to her knees, curls around herself, presses her fingers into the spaces between her ribs, pulls against her own ribs in a futile effort to ease the pain.

With a cold smile, Hel lets her hand fall to her side. The pain ceases instantly. Darcy's heart lurches back to life, and she takes a deep, shuddering breath.

Hel walks a slow circle around Darcy. Where she treads, the snow melts instantly beneath her bare feet, and the ground beneath scorches black.

"You believed yourself _clever_, didn't you, supplicant?" Hel asks. "Offering me that which you _knew_ already belonged to another. You thought you could outwit _me_. Steal that which was mine."

"I didn't steal anything." Darcy pulls herself up, stands. Her legs shake, but they hold her weight. Just. "You said that I could take him."

"And _you_ said that you would give me your soul." Hel raises her hand, clacks her nails together again. She pauses, one corner of her mouth curving into a half smile, and Darcy feels her magic growing darker again, so cold that she feels that it will freeze her from within. "I think perhaps I can still make use of you, supplicant. And take back all that was mine."

Darcy closes her eyes, bracing for another bout of pain.

It never comes.

When she dares to open her eyes again, she is alone. All around her, the ground is seared black. The trees have become bone, charred at the edges, utterly dead. Their branches moving together make the same sound as Hel's nails clacking together.

Even the snow has ceased to fall. Instead, ash rains down from the grey sky, drifting slowly down in the thin air to cover the world entire.

#

Blackwood House stands open.

Every window is open, the curtains billowing out into the day. Light spills in through the open front door: it flickers, as though it falling through shifting leaves, though there is nothing but thin cloud through which for it to fall.

Darcy stands motionless before the door. She can't remember how she got here. She just remembers the clacking of Hel's nails, that deep twisting pain. The dead forest: tree become bone, snow become ash.

There are vines creeping around the edges of the doors and windows of Blackwood House. She doesn't remember seeing them there before. Even as she stands here, she thinks she can see them grow, small green tendrils unfurling, suckers seeking out new holds. Small white flowers release a heady perfume into the air.

She reaches out and touches one of the flowers. The petals instantly bruise beneath her finger, and a dull pain throbs through her wrist. She turns her hand to see that the scarred flesh is inflamed. The pain tightens as though something thorny has been laced beneath her skin, and someone unseen is tugging at it in a rhythm that makes mockery of a human heart beat. The rhythm is not that of her own heart; that is racing, pulsing in an erratic beat that she can feel behind her eyes. It feels like the beating of a deer's heart when it knows that it is within the sights of a hunter.

"Darcy?" Fionnula's voice comes from behind her, heavy with concern.

Darcy turns - or tries to turn, her knees folding beneath her. In her peripheral vision, she sees that the vine twining around the door is blackening, withering to nothing.

Strong arms catch Darcy, scoop her up easily and carry her inside. Darcy closes her eyes, allows herself a moment of fantasising that Loki has finally come, that Loki will save her.

She doesn't need to open her eyes to know that it is not Loki who carries her, but Bran. His scent is earthen, while Loki is all leather and musk and ice.

Loki is not coming to save her. No one is ever coming to save her.

She opens her eyes as Bran lowers her to the bed in the master's bedroom. Fionnula stands behind Bran, her eyes bright.

"Who was it, lass?" Fionnula asks. She moves past Bran, pulls a blanket up to cover Darcy. "Morrigan? Arawn?"

The blanket makes Darcy too hot, but she lacks the strength to push it away. Her whole body feels heavy, as though she has been drugged. "What?"

Bran presses his hand to Darcy's forehead. "She's feverish." His fingers move down her arm, press lightly at the scarred flesh. Even his gentle touch sends a bolt of pain through Darcy. "An infection, do you think, Fionnula?"

There are black lines radiating from the scar on Darcy's wrist; they look like lines of infection, but darker, gnarled, as though living shadows are writhing beneath her skin. They are nothing like the delicate curlicues that Hel marked her with before. Those were seduction, a promise. These are a curse: violent, like chaos captured beneath her flesh. She doesn't need to look to know that the same lines radiate from the scar over her heart. They're probably inside her, too, bleeding into the muscle of her heart, into the marrow deep in her bones.

Everything she is is going to bleed black.

Darcy closes her eyes, concentrates on the twisted ring on her finger. Nothing happens, the metal is inert, too heavy against her skin. Hoping that maybe somehow her connection to Loki still holds, she focuses, sends a mental cry for help to him. Counts the beats of her heart, trying not to focus on the counterpoint of pain from her scars.

_One - Loki be here._

_Two - Please be here._

_Three - I walked into Helheim for you._

_Four - Come here for me._

_Five - Please._

_Six - Please._

_Seven…_

When she opens her eyes again, only Fionnula and Bran are there. They stand on either side of the bed, the names of gods and goddesses rolling from their tongues.

"A war god or goddess, perhaps," Fionnula says. "Or…" She breaks off, shakes her head. "Go and make some strong tea, lad. Add plenty of honey. And see if you can find some plain food." Bran nods, and leaves the room. "You're not going insane, Darcy," Fionnula says. "And you're not alone."

Through the window beyond Fionnula, Darcy sees the sky. The clouds are high and amorphous, the colour of ashes.

Fionnula hesitates, then pulls off her shawl, rolls back the sleeve of her dress. At first Darcy thinks it is a tattoo she sees inscribed on Fionnula's thin wrist, but the colours are shifting and moving beneath the older woman's thin skin. The green of new leaves deepens to emerald, then fades to amber, then brown. The colours delineate a delicate pattern of vines that curl up around Fionnula's wrist; it looks as though a vine is growing beneath her skin.

"My mother worshipped the old gods," Fionnula says. "I grew up knowing the equinoxes, the full moons, the solstices, almost more than I knew the common calendar. She was a midwife, and she took the goddess Brigid as a patron. She died when I was young, and I followed in her footsteps as best as I could. I became a midwife, and I worshipped Brigid. Even when I was the only one who lived in the valley, I celebrated the festivals and the full moons. Two moons ago, Brigid appeared in the circle that Bran and I had cast. There, as real as you or I. She marked me as her own." Fionnula traces the lines of the vine, a small smile curving her lips. "Magic is waking up. Real magic. And the gods are walking amongst us again. There are legends that said that they have before, in a time before that which anyone living can remember. They're going to make the world the way it was always meant to be." Fionnula holds her marked hand over Darcy's wrist; not touching, but close enough that Darcy can feel heat radiating from Fionnula's skin. It feels like the sun burning her. "This is not a new scar, is it?"

Darcy shoved her hand beneath the blanket. It's too hot, and the pressure of the wool on the scar makes it throb more, but she keeps it there all the same. "I didn't worship her. I didn't ask her to come."

"Even if it was…" Fionnula shakes her head. "There's no judgement here, Darcy. Some people walk darker paths than others. Without shadows, we wouldn't be able to see light, lass. War and death, they are part of us, just as they are part of the gods." She rolls her cuff back down, shrugs her shawl back on. "This valley, it called to you for a reason. It has been home to witches for generations. My mother and grandmother. The Blackwoods. Bran has uncles who lived here."

"But I didn't choose to come here," Darcy says. "They _sent_ me here. To get rid of me, I suppose."

Fionnula pats the side of the bed, her fingers carefully kept away from Darcy's body. "Callings can come in many guises, lass. Bran woke one morning and knew that he was being called. He walked clear across the country to come here, knowing nothing, knowing no one. He was a mathematician and an atheist before this, and he knew nothing of magic, of belief. But now it feels more natural to him than anything he has ever known."

The scar on Darcy's wrist throbs harder; it feels as though a spike of ice is being driven in between the bones of her forearm over and over. "Wait, you said the Blackwoods? There was a family who lived in this house? It's not just the name of the house."

Fionnula pulled her shawl a fraction tighter around herself. "They were the oldest family in the valley, lived here for generations. They mostly kept to themselves, but we knew they were kin, that they walked the same paths."

"I knew a Daniel Blackwood. In New York. I suppose it's a common name, but he…" Darcy looks to the ashen sky. She tastes something like soot in the back of her throat, black and thick as tar. Daniel Blackwood had worked for Stark Industries. He was the one who had ordered Darcy to watch over Loki in his cell. He had known what Loki was, had known how to torture him. Daniel Blackwood had worn Hel's marks, and he had vanished without a trace.

Fionnula nods slowly. "The last of them, I believe his name was Daniel. He had the blood, all right."

"But he wasn't like…" Darcy waves a hand vaguely at Fionnula's covered wrist. "He wasn't worshipping nature or delivering babies or any of that."

"Shadows and light, lass." Some expression that Darcy cannot fix on crosses behind Fionnula's eyes. "Does he still live?"

"I don't know. After everything…they couldn't find any record of him having been there at all. He just disappeared."

Fionnula almost looks disappointed. Before she can say anything more, Bran appears in the doorway. His arms are laden with a tray holding a mug of what smells like peppermint tea, a plate of crackers and sliced apple.

Darcy is almost absurdly grateful for the food and drink, for all that Fionnula has to help her with most of it. Eating, drinking, these are normal things, even if neither the tea, apple or crackers totally take away the taste of char in the back of her throat.

"It was Hel," Darcy says when all the tray holds is empty crockery. "We called her that, anyway, to make it easier. She was just Death. In New York, they raised her. There was a labyrinth, and everything…" She swallows hard against that black taste rising in her throat. "_We_ raised her. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just…lost. I hurt, and I didn't want to anymore."

Fionnula looks at Bran. Her face is turned away from Darcy, so Darcy can't see her expression, but Bran nods, leaves the room with the empty tray."

"It's human to run from pain, lass," Fionnula says. "When I was younger, I would have given anything for a child of my body. But every time I quickened, the child just slipped away like water. Time and time again, until my husband could bear no more, and slipped away, too. If a dark goddess or god had appeared to me and offered me a child, I would have taken that path. We all contain dark things, Darcy. In some of us, they run close to the surface, but even in those where it runs deep, it is always there." She holds her hand over where Darcy's wrist is hidden beneath the blankets. "Does it hurt?"

Darcy nods.

"I can make up a salve, see if it helps."

Darcy looks at Fionnula's covered wrist. "Does yours?"

Fionnula's lips curve, and she looks away. "I wish for your sake that I could say that it does. But it feels like standing in the sunlight on the first day of spring. Like knowing everything is going to be alright, now and forever."

Something twists hard inside of Darcy. She had felt that way, standing on the edge of the Bifrost with Loki.

"The godforms that rise are nebulous at first," Fionnula says. "We shape them as much from our own belief as from what they inherently are. You're not an evil person, Darcy Lewis, and death is sometimes merciful. Even shadows have a little light in them, lass." She stands, smooths down her skirt. "Do you want Bran or I to stay here, or would you prefer to be alone?"

Darcy shakes her head. "You always seem to come by when I need you."

Fionnula smiles, a maternal expression that makes that thing in Darcy twist even harder, for she recognises that her own mother never looked upon her thus. "We look after our own, lass. And Brigid herself looks after this valley, and those who live in it." She rests her hand briefly on Darcy's forehead. Her skin is too hot against Darcy's, but the gesture, at least, is comforting. "You rest, lass. We'll come by and see you tomorrow?"

Fionnula leaves. The sound of footsteps moving through the house, and then Darcy sees Fionnula and Bran pass the window. They are murmuring together, their voices too low for Darcy to catch anything of their conversation.

The food she ate is an uncomfortable weight in her stomach. It is all too easy to imagine those black threads of infection bleeding into it, turning it to poison. Maybe the black will seep out of her pores, ooze through her skin, stain the whole words the colour of a starless sky.

Something like an electric shock moves through her at that thought. Not because she is horrified by the thought of a world gone black, a world gone dead. But because - for the first time since she and Loki stood hand in hand before the Bifrost - there is a small thrill of want in her.

Darcy deliberately grinds the heel of her palm against the scar on her chest. The pain that spikes through her is strong enough that she can see it as a tide of red behind her eyes.

"I do _not_ want the world destroyed," she says. "I don't. I just want to go back to Darcy Lewis. Coffee, iPod, college credits. Goofing off because I have so much time on my hands. Nothing more than that."

The clouds outside shift, and a thin beam of sunlight pieces the gloom in the room. In the small pool of light on the wooden boards is the key to the hidden panel.

She launches herself out of bed, scoops up the key. As she stands again, she notices that the twisted metal ring on her hand has darkened. When she slides it on her finger, she sees that the skin beneath is dark purple, the top layers of skin sloughing away as though it has been scorched. There's no pain, just numbness.

The key feels lighter than it did the last time she held it, as though it is only a shell of metal filled with breath. She finds herself squeezing it hard between her thumb and forefinger. It's only when the metal gives an ominous creak that she makes herself relax.

A key to a hidden door in Blackwood House, home to the Blackwood family for generations. Fionnula _knows_ Daniel Blackwood, knows more about him that she's saying, Darcy is certain. Did Daniel grow up in this house, part of a coven of witches? As Fionnula worshipped Brigid, did Daniel and his kin worship Hel?

_Shadows and light_.

Darcy's scars throb with a deeper pain; it feels as though her tendons and ligaments are being twisted and tightened beneath her skin. She wonders if anyone ever really gets a choice as to which side they choose, shadows or light?

Loki had walked in shadows, and had chosen to move towards the light.

Or had he?

Darcy looks at the blackened ring again. It feels utterly inert, as _not there_ as the magic within her. A hole in the world.

There's a candle and matches on the table next to the bed. Darcy doesn't remember placing them there, though she supposes she must have at some stage. She lights a candle, holds it in her fist as she slides the key into the hidden keyhole.

The panel swings open easily, and she sees the space beyond. It is as it had been the first time she saw it: the wallpaper beyond, leading to the stone walls carved with that odd swirling pattern. To her right is the plain stone wall. To her left: three steps down, then another wall.

The candle light wavers as she steps into the small space. The last time she stepped over this threshold, she had laughed as she imagined Loki folding his fall frame into the space. Now, she cannot image him being there at all. This part of the world is hers alone.

The wooden steps creak slightly beneath her weight as she steps down. She can hear the faint sound of dust falling from the staircase onto whatever lies below; it makes her wonder how long it has been since anyone stood here. She wonders why Fionnula never came in here. She had the key, and Darcy doesn't see something like a locked front door keeping the old woman from anything,

The air grows warmer as she descends, and though she only steps down three stairs, it feels as though she has traversed a far greater distance. When she stands before the stone wall, the air is so warm and thick that sweat springs out on her temples, dampens her hair.

This close to the stone slab, she can see that the same swirling patterns that marked the wall continue on here, too. They are denser, but carved more lightly, their edges worn as though the slab of stone has been washed by the ocean. When she leans close to the stone, she can small salt, and something darker, something like decay. The ocean is far from here, but she remembers Fionnula mentioning a loch beyond the Blackwood forest. She has no idea if that would be salt- or freshwater. It seems like the kind of thing she could ask Loki, if he was here.

In the candlelight, the twisted ring on her finger looks even darker, like shadows. Loki is _not_ here, she tells herself. Even if he had projected that once, he had no deigned to do so again. No matter what anyone said to him, no matter where they put him, he was always Loki, and he would always find a way to do what he wanted. If he wanted to be here, he would be. And he was not, and so he did not. And can she blame him, really? Her human lifetime is the blink of an eye to him, nothing more.

The magic within is stirring again, moving in that soothing rocking rhythm. Everyone has abandoned her. Her father only ever wanted to use her in whatever sick fantasies filled his mind. Her mother didn't even love her enough to offer her the shotgun she held to Darcy's brother's heads and then her own. Jane never wanted her as an intern, and Darcy knows that she only ever irritated Erik. She's not strong, she's not smart, she doesn't have any super powers or money or power. She's just Darcy Lewis, easy to not need, easy to tuck away in some forgotten corner of the world and be forgotten herself.

She traces the curving lines on the stone. And blinks, because where she has touched the lines, they have filled with a faint sapphire light. It looks something like the illumination at the base of a flame, but it does not waver, does not fade. She pinches out the flame of the candle, and does not feel anything when the flame burns her skin.

The darkness that comes after the flame is quenched is total, as though she pinched out that sapphire light at the same time. When she glances back, she cannot even see any light falling through the opening in the wall. She could be anywhere. She could be nowhere.

Once upon a time, Darcy would have felt panic, being in such utter darkness. This Darcy - the one with pain beating like a heart beneath the skin of her wrist and chest, the one who walked into Helheim and back again - _this_ Darcy almost glories in it. It feels like she is surrounded by potential, as though she is standing in a vast expanse of _something_ that could become anything. All she has to do is reach out and direct it, tell it what to be.

The magic stirs again, and she lets it guide her hand back to the stone. Watches as her fingers trace shapes in the carved lines. They look like words, like a language that she has never seen before and yet knows in some place deeper than her bones and blood and memory.

A thread of magic rises in her throat, and she opens her mouth. The words that spill from her lips are like nothing she has heard, and yet, like the written language, they feel familiar. Like something she once knew, but has grown to forget.

There is a deep, grinding noise, and more dust showers down into the space between the stairs. Everything shakes, and the sapphire lines blink out.

Then, still.

Darcy reaches out, and her hand moved into unimpeded darkness. The stone slab is gone, vanished as though it had never been there at all.

A faint, colourless light bleeds from nowhere, lightening the darkness. She can see the stairway continuing, turning inwards and spiralling in towards the centre of the house. She cannot see from where the light originates; it is like the memory of starlight, like an afterimage imprinted on the world.

Another deep grinding noise comes from below, and this time she feels a tightening in the pit of her belly. She recognises it only belatedly as fear. The same feeling had moved through her before she had walked into the labyrinth in Central Park. She had joked, then, about the minotaur in the centre of the labyrinth, but she had walked in all the same.

Then, she had no idea what she was doing. Then, Loki had appeared, tried to stop her from entering.

He is not here now, and she knows what she is doing. Knows that Hel is down there, waiting.

The twisted ring on her finger is loose. She eases it off, turns it over and over between her fingers. Once, this ring had felt like salvation, a light in the darkness.

Once, Loki had stood at her side, and she had been certain that he would remain there.

The ring falls easily from her fingers. It chimes once as it tumbles down the stairs, and vanishes silently into the shadows.

She is choosing this. For there to be light, there has to be shadows. Maybe she was always supposed to be part of the shadows.

Darcy skips down the remainder of the stairs.

They curve down and down, spiralling in until she feels that she must be deep below the earth. Finally, they open out onto a space larger than the house above, everything illuminated with that same eldritch light that comes from everywhere and nowhere. Floor, roof and walls are all packed earth, the black broken here and there by colourless roots. Where the roots have poked too far from the dirt, someone has cut them back, seared the ends so that they do not grow any further. In one corner, the floor has been stamped down, the upper layer of earth scorched black and hard. There is no source of ventilation that Darcy can see, and yet the air is fresh and crisp.

Darcy breathes in, breathes out. Waits.

Once, when she was possibly no older than three or four, her father had locked her in the basement for some infringement which she cannot remember the details off. All she can remember is formless black, stifling air thick with the rot of the potatoes her mother had stored. She remembers screaming until her throat was hoarse, being so frightened that she had wet herself. She had been so certain that no one was ever going to come to let her out.

She should feel that way now. Just being underground should spark off something of those old memories. But there's only a feeling of lightness, of freedom. Of _release_.

"Of course there is," Hel's voice says. It comes from all around Darcy, from everywhere and nowhere. "You belong here, Darcy. You have always belonged here."

She emerges as particles of dust that congeal out of the air, spinning in and in to form a tall figure of bone and shadow. She steps out of the blackened corner; shadows swirl in her wake and become a group of black-robed people. Their hoods are drawn forward, so Darcy cannot see their features. And thought she cannot hear them, she knows that they are chanting. They are the Blackwoods, and they are invoking Hel.

"For generations, they worshipped me," Hel says. "And none of them were strong enough to give me true form." Her face is younger, her skin smoother than Darcy remembers, like marble made pliant. When she steps forward, her skirt parts, and Darcy can see that both of her legs are whole. "Just as none of the other supplicants were strong enough." She moves closer to Darcy, bringing with her a scent like dry musk, like bone dust and earth and blood. "No one is going to come for you, Darcy. They put you here to forget about you. Even Loki." She smiles at Darcy's startled look. "Oh, I know all about him, my supplicant. He and all of the other pretenders." She tilts her head to one side. "Even now, he dances with another. He wears a gift from her about his neck."

Darcy's heart squeezes painfully tight. "I don't believe you."

Hel arches one eyebrow. "Have I lied to you, supplicant? Even when you bargained with me to take him out of Helheim itself, I let you take him, did I not? I took your pain when you asked. I _chose_ you."

Darcy doesn't want to believe Hel, but it makes sense. Of course Loki would find someone else. Someone smarter, prettier, someone stronger. Someone _better_. Why would _he_ ever choose Darcy Lewis?

"You have a choice, Darcy," Hel says. She lifts a hand, and the hooded figures array themselves around the room. The strange light slides into their hoods, and Darcy sees their faces. None of them is Daniel. "You can choose to become something else. Something _more_. Something that no one will dare hurt, something that never needs to be afraid of anything, ever again. Something that you have always been meant to be."

The air is vibrating with the still-inaudible chanting of the Blackwoods; Darcy feels it moving in waves against her skin, the pain pulsing through her scars increasing with each wave. Hel's hand is still raised; she turns it palm up, then slowly curls her fingers inwards.

And just like that, the pain ceases. Darcy is aware, for the first time, of all the other pains that she always feels and is barely aware of: the strain of muscles in her shoulders and back, aches in her knees and hips. And deeper, the darknesses that always pull at her: the memories of her father, of her mother, of New York, of Vinh and Beth and Ravi and Ozymandias, all the times that she has never been good enough, all of those weights are gone, and she is _free_.

"Is this…is this what most people feel like?" Darcy asks, almost giddy from the lack of pain.

Hel shakes her head. "This is what _gods_ feel like." She lowers her hand, and all of that pain and weight descend again.

Darcy crumples beneath the weight of it, falls to her knees.

"The choice is yours," Hel says. "You are free to leave, to return to your _life_."

Darcy glances up, sees that thin light is spilling down the staircase from above. When she focuses it, she feels the magic within her receding, the tide moving out and out. Without it, she feels empty, as though she is made from straw, nothing inside her but pain.

If she goes up there, she will be free from Hel. But what else will she have? Months, maybe years, in the middle of nowhere. Maybe forever. And Hel is right: no one is coming for her.

The chanting has ceased, the Blackwoods standing motionless, their features shadowed again.

Darcy pulls herself to her feet with difficulty. It feels as though every muscle and joint is screaming in pain, and her whole body feels impossibly heavy.

She closes her eyes, sends a silent thought to Loki: _Come now, be here right now._

She counts her heartbeats. Makes it to a hundred before she knows that he is not coming. No one is. And she is so heavy and so tired, and everything is full of pain.

She holds out her hand to Hel. "I don't want to live like this any more."

Hel's hand closes over Darcy's. The magic floods back into Darcy, washing away all of the heaviness, all of the fatigue, all of the pain.

Hel smiles, and it is the kind of smile that Darcy always wanted from her mother, never got. "Welcome home, daughter."

#

The light that falls into the windows of Blackwood Cottage is the indistinct violet that speaks or either dusk or dawn. Darcy locks the panel in the wall, then looks out of the window for a long time. She cannot tell which time of day it is, just knows that it is one of those between times.

The scars on her wrist and chest no longer throb. Neither are they black, or radiating lines of infection. They look the same as they had when she arrived in Scotland: the flesh gnarled and slightly reddened. They just look like scars now.

The magic stirs within her, and she draws on it. She has no idea _how_ she does, or how she focuses it, it just feels like instinct. Through the magic, she can see the faint lines of Hel's original touch, as well as the newer scars, both of them shimmering like dark oil beneath her skin.

There is no pain, and even when she thinks about her father and mother, there's nothing but an odd detachment, as though she is watching a film of someone else's life.

She's on her way to the kitchen when she hears the sound of a car engine outside. Coffee instantly forgotten, she runs through the house, opens the front door in time to see a sleek black car drive away. All she can see of the driver is red hair.

It takes her a long moment to focus on the man who stands at the end of the path leading up to the house. At first, she sees him only in snatches. Dark hair cropped to just above his shoulders, green eyes. Hands thrust into the pockets of a heavy black wool coat, green scarf knotted around his throat.

He walks up the path slowly, his boots making a solid sound against the paving stones. He stops on the other side of the door, at a distance that would be just out of her reach, should she stretch out a hand to him. There is uncertainty in her eyes.

Some instinct in Darcy folds the magic over onto itself, rendering it as inert as it had been when she had first arrived here. "Loki?" she asks. "Are you really here?"

He says nothing, swallows hard. She moves forward, reaches out and touches his sleeve. Solid. Real. Not a projection.

The car drives past the house again, slow enough this time that Darcy can see Natasha in the driver's seat, Hawkeye at her side. Natasha nods at Darcy, and Darcy can see wariness in her eyes. There is a new scar on her cheek, livid and red.

Darcy looks back at Loki. When he breathes in, the layers of his scarf part slightly, giving her a glimpse of gold beneath. Her hand is still on his sleeve, and she can feel the scant heat of his body bleeding through the wool.

Loki is here. Loki is really here.


End file.
